The Point of Death: Mark 5:21-43

Mark 5:21-43 and the Meaning of Death

I'm going to ask you to turn in your Bibles to the Gospel of Mark, chapter 5. We'll be looking at verses 21 to 43. Here now, the inspired Word of God. 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 twelve years, and had endured much at the hands of many physicians, and had 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 touch his garments, I will get well. Immediately the flow of her 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 when 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 along the child's father and mother and his own companions and entered the room where the child was.

Taking the child by the hand, he said to her, which translated 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. The word of God. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we would just ask now that you'd be pleased to bless the preaching of the word.

Lord, that you would guide my thoughts, my words, that your word for your people would touch their hearts, and that you would be glorified. We pray this in the name of our mighty Savior, Jesus Christ.

Amen. You may be seated. The title of the sermon is, The Point of Death. This is where the daughter was at, but it's also to remind us what is the point of death. Sickness and death are an ever-present reality in this world.

There's no escaping it, but that rarely keeps us from trying. And by God's grace, there have been great advancements in helping people to live longer and healthier lives. But still, death comes for us all.

And sickness has yet to be eradicated. So how do we respond? Most of us just do what we can to avoid getting sick and try to not needlessly jeopardize our lives. Some people go to great lengths to avoid getting sick that they end up hardly living at all.

But still, death comes for us all. So I ask again, how do we respond? In Ecclesiastes, chapter 7, verse 2, we read, It is better to go to a house of mourning than to go to a house of feasting, because that is the end of all mankind, and the living puts this in his heart.

We should reflect on the tragedies that are part and parcel of this sin-cursed world and learn from them. Sickness and death are not natural. In the very fiber of our being, we know this, and thus we fight against it.

But even more than that, God in his word has revealed the cause of these curses. And they come from sin, the consequences of sin. Not that sickness and death are a one-for-one cause and effect for each individual, but they are part of the covenantal curse visited on all mankind from the fall of our first father, Adam.

Sickness and death in this world is a judgment that points to a worse judgment to come, an eternal judgment in hell. The power of these temporal judgments is mighty and terrible. We need a great Redeemer and King to deliver us from the judgment we deserve.

Christ the Servant King Meets Suffering and Death

Now this morning, we're looking at Mark 5. Two weeks ago, I was asked to preach at Harborview Church in Port Jeff by our good brother, Pastor Jason Contino. He was away with his family celebrating the wedding of one of his sons, and Jason's been preaching through Mark with his congregation and highlighting the actions and the attributes of Jesus Christ, the servant king.

And so this morning, we're going to be looking at two stories that are told as one. And in these two stories told as one, we see the ever-present realities of sickness and death on full display. And yet, we see the power and authority of Christ is even stronger than these.

This was incredibly relevant to the original recipients of Mark's gospel as they were facing deadly persecution. And again, sickness and death was all around them. And of course, it remains relevant for us today.

I remember last time listening to the prayer and hearing about those who were sick, who were being interceded for in the prayer, and even hearing about how someone they had been praying for had recently passed.

And so they were praying for the family, and they were praying for comfort. And of course here, as we pray each week, as we look at our prayer list, we're filled with requests for those who are sick. We hear about requests for family members, for those who have died.

It's around us all the time. We can't escape it. And because we know these people, it breaks our hearts. We mourn with those who mourn. And so, as we consider this message, recognize that what we experience every day, Mark's going to take some time to intimately acquaint us with how Jesus saw and responded to those who are suffering.

So our reading starts in verse 21. With Jesus having just crossed back over the Sea of Galilee, after showing his power in the first part of the chapter, by freeing a man who was possessed by a legion of demons.

That's an incredible story in and of itself, and an awesome display of his own power. But it's even more so when you think about what happened later on in Acts 19, where there are seven sons of a Jewish high priest.

And they take on one demon, and he beats them and leaves them fleeing from the place, bloodied and naked. Seven men, who were known as exorcists, couldn't take on one demon. And yet a legion come trembling at the feet of Christ, fearful of what he's going to do to them.

And though this demon-possessed man had been terrorizing that whole region, when the people hear the story and they gather around, they're more afraid of the one who set him free. And they ask him to please leave and get away from us.

So Jesus leaves, and he comes back to Capernaum. Now Capernaum is where Jesus had healed the paralytic, after telling him that his sins were forgiven. This happened back in chapter 2 of Mark. And I mention this just for a little bit of context, because the religious leaders took offense at this, which they were prone to do.

It didn't take long at all for Jesus to run afoul of those who led the people. And yet the people themselves couldn't get enough of Jesus. They would flock to him, seeking healing, seeking exorcism, seeking to just spend hours listening to him preach.

Now not long after his return from Gerasenes, a man by the name of Jairus comes up to him and falls at his feet, begging for help. The fact that we have his name, you know, you read this account, you might not think anything of it, but the fact that we have his name is interesting in and of itself.

Because countless people have been impacted by Christ in his earthly ministry. But the reality is, we know precious few of their names, their identities. And yet here, we have the name of this synagogue official.

Now it could be that, if you know, this gospel is from the vantage point of the apostle Peter. Mark was following along with Peter, and he's probably relaying to us what Peter has been relaying to him.

And it could be that because Peter came from this area, that he was familiar with this man. You know, he maybe had a relationship with him. And so maybe that's why his name happens to come up where other names don't.

But I'm wondering if it's perhaps for another reason, for more of a contrast to this story, as we see these two stories that are told as one. Jairus was a well-known man in the community, a synagogue official.

Now a synagogue official was a lay leader in the congregation. He wasn't a professionally trained scribe or Pharisee. But he oversaw the maintenance of the building. He acquired the scrolls for reading.

He even assigned who would read, who would pray, who would preach. And he was responsible to be careful about the orthodoxy of that which was being preached. So all that to say was that he was a person with standing in his community.

Well-known, a person of importance. And being a leader in his own right, he may have desired to keep up good relations with the established religious leader, the professionals of the day, the scribes and the Pharisees.

It's the same as today, right? Where sometimes keeping pace with the status quo is the safe bet for looking to maintain your position, your economic status, your reputation. And Jesus has a way of upsetting the status quo.

So Jairus wouldn't have been the first one to keep his distance from Jesus in order to remain in the good graces of the Jewish leaders. As we read the Gospels, we see that some people were afraid to speak too highly of Christ because they were afraid they'd be cast out.

We don't know what Jairus' situation was. We don't know what his relationship was prior to that. All we know is that the scribes were already charging Christ with blasphemy at this point. And did that make a difference to him?

We don't know. We know he's a man of position, a man of means as well. And yet he comes and throws himself at the feet of Christ, humbly, earnestly. No pomp, no circumstance, no dignity with his position, no expectation of professional courtesy.

One leader to another, you can do me a favor, I need a little help here. His status, his wealth, it means absolutely nothing in the moment because he's face to face with the death of his daughter. She's only 12, we find out.

She's a child, his only daughter. I said before, death is unnatural. We all know it. And if it's possible for it to be any more unnatural, it's when a parent has to bury a child. But sickness and death is so pervasive in this world that not even our children are immune to these curses.

And death being unnatural, but the prospect of it, it has a way of bringing sudden clarity to our lives. The details of life normally keep us very distracted about what's most important in the world. We spend our days thinking about just what's in front of us.

For some, they're just trying to make ends meet. They're just trying to get through the day. Others are seeking out the maximum enjoyment they can out of this life, going YOLO. Some have goals of getting an education.

Some have desire to accomplish great things in a career. Some focus living on life to the fullest, making sure that their bucket list, they cross off every item. But when we're facing the finality of death, our perspectives, our priorities are suddenly altered.

Now we're asking different questions. What have we accomplished of value? What legacy are we leaving? Where are we going? What really matters? And here, Jairus has only one thing on his mind, and it's not his mortality that he's facing, but that of his little girl.

How can he save his daughter? I mentioned before that he's a man of means. We read about the commotion near the end of people loudly crying and wailing who end up laughing at Jesus when he says the child is not dead but asleep.

Laughing seems like an odd response to someone. You think you'd be, you respond differently. But it's a little less so when we learn that it was customary in those days to hire professional mourners to lament a loved one's passing.

In fact, one rabbi taught that even the poorest person in Israel should hire at least two flute players and one wailing woman for a funeral, just so you know for future reference. And yet Jesus encounters a large commotion.

There were many there who laughed at him when he said that she was asleep. If Jairus has the means to have a large entourage of professional mourners on standby, it's likely that he spared no expense trying to save his daughter.

But here she is at the point of death. And having exhausted every other means of saving his daughter and to no avail, he knows of one who has the power like no one else. A man who is capable of every kind of healing.

And he has just returned to the area. So he comes to Jesus and he begs him, please come and lay your hands on her and she will be saved. She will live. He's urgent. He's earnest. There's no time. Please come.

And Jesus, the servant king, with a heart full of compassion, goes off with this man, ready to leave the crowd to fulfill his request. But as Jesus goes off with Jairus to heal his daughter, the large crowd follows along with him, crowding him, pressing in on him.

The Woman With the Hemorrhage and the Power of Faith

And then in verse 25 we read of a woman who has had a hemorrhage for 12 years. You know, interesting, this little girl is on the brink of death. She's 12 years old and we think, so young. Too young in our minds to be dying.

Her life was too short. And yet for her entire life, this unknown woman, this unnamed woman has been suffering. And all of a sudden 12 years goes from being so short to so long. 12 years. She had endured much at the hands of many physicians.

She had spent all she had and wasn't helped at all but rather had grown worse. This is a familiar story if you've read through this before. And you might think, you know, it's really only a few verses.

And we can just like fly through it and not really think about what's going on and how much she's suffered. But Mark, who actually gives us the shortest gospel of the four, he spends the most amount of verses on this account.

More than Matthew, more than Luke. For a guy who is rapid-paced through this narrative, immediately, immediately, immediately, all of a sudden he's taking a moment to focus in on what's going on here.

Again, he's got an original audience that's probably Gentile converts. They're probably experiencing extreme persecution. And he is highlighting the actions of Christ when they're facing all sorts of difficulties.

So he knows, so they know, what kind of savior, what kind of king they have pledged themselves to. In a world where the Roman Empire is everything, and they're dealing with emperor worship, here's Jesus proclaiming the kingdom of God and he wants them to focus on his power, on his love, on who he is.

But if we just rush past this, as we are prone to do, we have so many distractions, so many things to read. Here, they're probably reading this and thinking deeply about what this person is going through.

We want to consider for a moment what she has suffered. Because if we rush past the healing, it doesn't have the same impact on us at all. Same thing can happen when you hear a prayer request. Oh, that's a shame, let's just throw up a quick prayer and move on.

And we're not thinking about that person, and what else can we do? And what is God doing in all this? So this woman has been bleeding for 12 years. She had done all she could to get well. She had done her due diligence.

She exhausted all her financial resources. Anyone who has a loved one who's required serious medical care, they know how consuming the cost can be when you're trying to care for someone who has desperate needs.

And how quickly the expense can add up. And what's worse is all the treatments, everything they're trying, nothing's working. But instead, making it worse. You know, in the Talmud, which is a collection of the rabbinical teachings that used to govern Jewish life, there are records of how to treat illnesses of this nature.

One commentary offered the footnote that one remedy consisted of drinking a goblet of wine containing a powder compounded from rubber, alum, and garden crocuses. Another treatment consisted of a dose of Persian onions cooked in wine, administered with the summons arise out of your flow of blood.

Other physicians prescribed sudden shock, or carrying the ash of an ostrich egg in a certain cloth. And for some reason, none of these worked. I don't know. It's worse than WebMD. With this continual blood loss, she likely suffered from iron deficiency anemia, which we don't really think of.

But the symptoms of anemia are very serious. It can have extreme fatigue, weakness, chest pain, rapid heartbeat, shortness of breath, headaches, dizziness, lightheadedness, inflammation, or soreness of tongue.

It can cause poor appetite, plus the desire to eat non-food things, such as ice, dirt, starch. Anemia is often caused by blood loss. It can be caused by a lack of iron in diet. It can be caused by the body's inability to absorb iron.

And this kind of hit home for me because Joelle suffered from iron deficiency for a time. And when she had her stroke three years ago, it was made worse because she had to go on blood dinners. Initially, before the stroke, she had been prescribed iron supplements to give her.

But after the stroke, she required intravenous iron infusions. She had to go four to six times each time she needed the treatment. And she needed it a few times. But when her iron was low, she was constantly dealing with fatigue and migraines.

But she wasn't dealing with it like this woman was. I mean, by God's grace, we live in a time of great medical advancements, so treating this was very possible. We were able to do that. We could drive over and get these intravenous infusions and then drive home.

And all's well. There are many medical conditions today that are treatable. But in the past, we're a death sentence. Serious iron deficiency can easily be treated today. Supplements, diet, medicine. Yet if untreated, it could actually lead to death.

And because it's so rare, we don't think about it. But here, someone suffering from anemia will have a weakened immune system, less able to fight off other sickness and disease, and it can even lead to heart failure eventually.

So this woman, for 12 years, a little girl's entire life, was suffering day by day, in pain from all sorts of ailments, symptoms that accompanied the condition. And despite all the money and all the doctors, it didn't get better, but worse.

And then there's the spiritual component. This blood flow made her ceremonially unclean. I had Dan read this morning from Leviticus 15 and Numbers 5, because it was so pertinent to what this woman was living with in this time, in this place, under the Old Covenant.

Wherever she sat became unclean. And if anyone touched that seat or used that seat, they had to wash their clothes and bathe and be unclean until evening. Many people don't understand the purpose of declaring things to be clean or unclean.

Some people think the focus is just ensuring good personal hygiene, avoiding food poisoning. We have to be careful. There's many out there who are trying to explain the Bible away, purely as a man-made document with man-centered concerns.

They refuse to acknowledge the truth that the Word of God was written by men who were carried along by the Spirit of God, and that they wrote what God intended them to write for the reasons God intended them to write it.

And ceremonial uncleanness, like many things under the law, was meant to teach the people about God and their relation to Him. Indeed, that which was ceremonially unclean was an everyday reminder of our sin and separation from God, our need to be cleansed that we might be able to approach a holy God, to be in His presence.

There was a man named Andrew Bonar, a Scottish minister in the 1800s, and he wrote a commentary on the Book of Leviticus. And in reflecting on what we read in chapter 15 of Leviticus, he said,. Everything she touched became defiled.

Every couch she rested on at noon, everyone that touched her, even the very physicians she went to to consult, or who came to see her when she could not visit them because of her distress, were unclean for a day after.

Her husband himself, if she had one, was in like manner separated from her, or polluted and defiled if he did not live apart from her. And he says this,. She was a living picture of the awful truth that sin, however hidden to the view of men, is so virulent in its nature and tendency that it dissolves every relationship and sets apart the sinner for misery and sadness.

And he even mentions a story in Mark. He says, take the case of the woman in Mark 5, 29. Twelve years thus deeply distressed, groaning over her misery, living alone, in vain trying every physician, and keeping aloof from friends as much as possible, lest she should spread defilement on them by her presence.

He says, what a picture of a sinner. A sinner conscious of her nature's fearful pollution, mourning over her weak and wicked heart, trying every remedy that a man can suggest, and yet still sad at heart, her sore still running with new outflowings of sin.

And I wonder if there are those of us who would be uncomfortable with such a statement. It seems so harsh to put all this on her, to make her a picture of sin, that this condition and this woman in it, a walking picture of sin and all the misery it produces.

Maybe we're not concerned because we don't know her, but if someone said that about someone we know who is afflicted, we'd be like, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, that's not what... It makes us uncomfortable, but if it makes us uncomfortable, it's because we don't truly understand the pervading presence and influence of sin.

Sin is devastating and destructive. It condemns us to nothing but misery, in this life and for all eternity. Her physical manifestation of illness was a picture of an ever-present reality, an ever-present spiritual reality, not just for her, but for all of us.

Any person could be unclean. Every person under the Old Covenant would experience uncleanness at some point, because every person God wants us to know ultimately is spiritually unclean. Unclean because of the sin that pollutes us all.

This woman was ceremonially unclean for 12 years. She was cut off religiously and socially. She couldn't come and gather for worship. People wouldn't want her around because they wouldn't want to go through all the headache of having to get clean afterwards.

She was depleted financially, physically, and spiritually. There's a 12-year-old girl who's at the point of death, but she had been dying for 12 years. And so in her desperation, in the distraction of the moment where all the crowd is going one way, she sneaks up behind Jesus because she's heard about Him.

She's heard the stories about Him. He offers hope to the hopeless. He fixes the unfixable. She said to herself, if I just touch His garments, I'll be saved. And so she does what could be considered unthinkable in that society.

She risks the disapproval, indeed the anger of the crowd, by coming through in all her uncleanness, and she touched Christ's clothing. And then we have one of Mark's favorite words. Immediately, immediately the flow of blood was dried up, and she knew she was healed of her affliction, her curse, in that very moment.

But there's another thing that happened immediately. Jesus perceived that power had gone out from Him, and He stops, and He says, who touched me? It's amazing. Here is Jesus on His way to bring healing to a dying girl, and yet He's able to stop and minister to another great need.

Jesus is not impatient. He's not flustered. He's not concerned that He's not going to get done everything He needs to get done. He stops, and He takes the time to meet this need as well. The woman knows He's talking about her.

Previously, she snuck up from behind, not wanting to be seen, not wanting to be known, just trying to grab her healing. But now she falls down before Him and tells Him the whole story, the whole truth.

That could be humiliating, to speak of her affliction, her great need, her approach. Was it inappropriate? Was it superstitious? Was it an attempt at stealing? And yet Jesus doesn't rebuke her at all.

He doesn't offer correction in this moment as a rebuke, but He doesn't want her to misunderstand what took place either. He calls her daughter. Verse 34. He says to her, daughter. Do you know that we don't see that anywhere else in the Gospels?

We don't see Him referring to someone else as daughter. Here, Jairus, Jairus is leading Jesus and a crowd to his house for the sake of his daughter. The man is literally moving heaven and earth for the sake of his child.

But who intercedes for this woman? Who's caring about her? Who's going to Christ for her? She's all by herself. She's alone. She's suffering. She's desperate. And yet she's not alone. While Jairus is bringing a whole crowd to save his daughter, she sneaks up by herself and yet Christ calls her daughter.

Christ shows her love. Christ shows her concern. Christ shows her His endearment for her. And then He says, your faith has saved you. Go in peace and be healed of your affliction. Merely coming in contact with the garment wasn't what saved her.

And Christ doesn't want her settling for some anonymous healing and then nothing more. He wants her to realize that her faith in Him is what saved her. He wants her to know that she is known and loved.

And now that she is delivered and her delivery, as embarrassing as it might have been, is public, her time of isolation is also over. She's not alone anymore. She doesn't have to be removed from anyone.

She's been given community. All in that moment. She who is unclean is unclean no longer. Another amazing attribute of our Lord. In every other circumstance under the Old Covenant, the one who is unclean pollutes everyone else by contact.

But not with Christ. With Christ, He's not polluted. He has the power to remove the pollution and make us clean. And just like that, after years of pain and suffering, of every last dollar spent on treatment that only increased her suffering, after enduring crippling isolation, in a moment it's all over.

And she was restored. The life that she lived must have felt like no life at all, but rather death. And yet her great need, great as it was, was what brought her to Christ. Is what healed her. Christ loved her.

And He gave her more than she ever expected. But while this woman is getting her life restored, some folks come from Jairus' house and they tell them it's too late. Sorry, this woman got her healing, shared her story, but the daughter of Jairus passed.

And Jesus overhears this report and before we hear how Jairus might have responded in that moment, Jesus says, don't be afraid, only believe. As a father myself, of daughters no less, I can only imagine what Jairus was going through.

Men, our calling is to protect and provide for our families, to lay down our lives if necessary. We seek to do all we can to keep them safe. And yet there are times we fail. There's times that we are powerless against the circumstances of life.

You know, the commentators often point out the imperfection of the woman's faith by the possibly superstitious attempt to just make contact with his garments. But it could be said that Jairus' faith was rather incomplete itself.

Earlier, in Capernaum, there was a Gentile centurion. Not a synagogue official who knew the law and knew the expectation of Messiah. A Gentile is looking for healing for his servant and he considered himself unworthy for Christ to come under his roof.

He just said, say the word and I know he'll be healed. Jesus was impressed with his faith. Jairus has faith. He's coming to Christ. He's on his knees. But he doesn't have quite that much faith. He says, just say the word.

He's like, no, no, come, put your hands on her. He wants guarantees. He wants to make sure. But now there's a delay. When time was of the essence. Your daughter is dead. But Jesus speaks words of comfort and perhaps after witnessing what has just transpired with this woman, he has the courage to bear up and they continue to the house.

And when they get there, as we read, there's a loud commotion. People loudly crying and wailing. But apparently not with an emotionally invested interest. Because when Jesus says, why are you crying? The child is not dead but asleep.

They laugh at him. You'd think they'd be overjoyed. Maybe dubious. But to laugh? To mock? To scorn? The strange response to our ears. As I mentioned before, it's likely that they're professional mourners.

As was the custom of the day. But it's still hard-hearted. And as one commentator noted, there's always going to be skeptics. There'll be those who mock at faith and trust in God because they can't see him.

But Jesus puts them all out. He's not scared. He's not impressed. He's not worried. He sends them out. He takes the girl by the hand. Says, little girl, I say to you, get up. Just like that. Mark's favorite word.

Immediately. The little girl stood up and began to walk around. For the parents and disciples, immediately, they were completely astounded. But just like the woman, Jairus' faith, imperfect as it may have been, has been greatly rewarded.

Once again, the Lord Jesus has put on display his glorious nature as the servant king. His great concern and compassion for the people. His merciful willingness to meet them where they're at. And his great power and authority.

There's nothing he can't do. He can calm the wind and the sea with a word. He can cause a legion of demons to tremble at his feet. He can end 12 years of suffering and torment with a touch. And with a simple command, he can raise the dead.

But then he gives this interesting command. Not to tell anyone. And we often find this strange. Why not tell everyone? Everyone should know this. It seems counterintuitive. There's several reasons why Jesus keeps his true identity as the Messiah on what they'd say the down low sometimes.

And time does not allow me to explain them all. But it is fascinating in light of the fact that there are so many people today who are so focused on signs and wonders being for today. But Jesus himself is willing to keep some great displays of his power hidden from the public view.

That crowd of mockers outside of Jairus' door, he didn't parade that little girl and say, see? See what I can do? Skeptics. He wasn't worried about impressing them. It was though he recognized that the miracles were not the main focus.

There are those who think healings and other miracles today will get the world to believe in Christ if only they see. Yet for those who rejected Christ in his time, he refused to give them the signs and wonders that they demanded.

He instead condemned their demands. He said the only sign they would get is the sign of Jonah. And just as Jonah was in the belly of the sea monster for three days and three nights, so the Son of Man will be in the heart of the earth for three days and three nights.

The resurrection was the ultimate sign and vindication for Christ. That empty tomb that remains today is a witness to all the power and authority of Jesus Christ. Our calling is to hear and believe. Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of Christ, not the signs and wonders.

Sure, they proved who he was. They proved Christ. But those who want to reject Christ will always seek to attribute miracles to something other than God. Jesus said, my words are spirit and life. And it is the spirit that gives us ears to hear.

The spirit is the one that regenerates the heart that we can repent and believe the gospel. We don't have to be eyewitnesses to believe. The spirit within testifies of the truth. So as we come to the end of this account, what are the takeaways?

As we consider the two stories this morning, we see two very different people. A well-known man, Jairus, highly respectable as a lay leader in the congregation and community, a man of wealth and influence.

And then we have an unnamed woman, isolated from the community, suffering for 12 years with this debilitating illness that has depleted her financially, physically, and spiritually. Very different people with very different situations.

What they have in common is what we all have in common. They have a need that only Christ can fulfill. Their faith isn't perfect. It isn't complete. But the object of their faith is. And how great is the power and love of Christ.

He's merciful. He meets both of them where they are at. He has time for both of them. And he has the words that each one needs to hear. And he provides both of them with more than they expected when they first approached.

He gave them so much more. Now, sickness and death are a result of the curse because of sin. They are terrible. They limit the quality and duration of our lives. And although we have been graced with all sorts of medical advancements, we are still limited in our ability to defeat sickness.

And we are utterly powerless to avoid death forever. But Christ, Christ has displayed complete power and authority over both. And just as these curses point to the eternal judgment, his power over them demonstrates his ability to save us from that eternal judgment as well.

Just as he can deliver from sickness and death, he can deliver from eternal condemnation. So what's the point of death? It reminds us of the consequences of sin and points us to our great need for Jesus Christ.