Saving Faith In A Merciful Saviour

This sermon is from Grace Fellowship Church in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. To access other sermons or to learn more about us, please visit our website at graceedmonton .ca.

Christ’s Power in Mark 5 and the Need for Faith

So we are in now Mark chapter 5, Mark chapter 5 verses 21 to 43. And in many ways this is going to be a continuation, a continuation of what we've already heard. As a matter of fact, if you wanted to summarize what we've seen here just in the last chapter and a bit, you'll remember that Mark chapter 4 is largely a chapter that deals with the teaching of Christ.

That is up until verse 35. And then beginning in verse 35, we again see, as we have often seen in the narratives of Scripture, especially here in this book, in this book of Mark, is that Christ is demonstrating his power.

He is demonstrating his authority over the things, the forces, the people around him. And so when we were in Mark chapter 4 and verse 35, you'll remember that we looked there at Christ calming the sea.

And then we saw that that was Christ's power over nature. Last week we saw Christ's power over Satan with the demon-possessed man. And this week we're going to get to look at Christ's power over disease and death.

And what it is that we're going to learn here in this text is very, very, very important. It was A .W. Tozer that said that the first thing that pops into your mind when you think about God, that is the most important thing about you.

And here Christ is going to teach us something about himself that every single one of us in this room need. Oh, we need it, brothers and sisters, we do. And so we'll go to the Lord, we'll ask for his help, and then we'll get started.

Father, we, oh Lord, we do, we need Christ. Oh Lord, we need him. Every hour, every day, every minute of every hour. And Lord, I want so badly for your people today to see the Christ that is unveiled in this passage that is before us.

Oh Lord, we need his mercy, we need his grace. Oh God, we need his sovereign power. And Father, we need to know how to relate to him by faith. And so would you help us to do just that. Oh God, we call upon you.

We've had already a rocky time at the beginning, but put these distractions out of our minds, out of my mind. And Lord, help us to see Christ. Lord, for those who are in this room who do not know him, oh God, I pray that they would see Christ today.

Lord, we bring this all to you in his name. Amen. Amen. So this week we're in Mark chapter 5, beginning in verse 21. And I always give us the main idea. What I want to do is this with our time today. Before you leave that back door, I want you, all of us in this room, me and all of you, to see Christ for who he is as he's revealed in this text.

I want us to see Christ as the sovereign, I'm going to say it, sovereign, merciful savior of the world. And we're going to demonstrate how that is in Scripture. And then what I want us to do, brothers and sisters, what this text shows us is what a genuine saving faith looks like.

And so if we could summarize it all in one sentence. I want to show you Christ as he is revealed in Scripture. And then I want to show you how you are to respond to him as a believer. And even if you're here as an unbeliever, how you are to relate to Christ.

Now this week we're going to do something a little bit differently. Usually what I do is I piecemeal the text in such a way that we look at a point that the text makes. We do the exposition, we do some illustration, some application, and then we move along.

This text teaches us a bunch of things throughout the passage. And so it's kind of one of those texts, if you know what I mean, where we're going to do a lot of the heavy lifting up front. We're going to do the exposition early on.

I found just some, what I like to call, exegetical gems, some great bits and pieces in this text that I want to share with you. And then we're going to apply what it is that we learn in this text. And if you're following along, it might be helpful just as a visual to look at the insert that's in your bulletin, because you'll see how we've broken it down.

I have three points of exposition and then three points of application. So we're going to jump right into the text. And the very first thing that I want to introduce us all to here today is Jairus, the ruler of the synagogue.

And so we begin in verse 31. After Christ, you'll remember from last week, Christ was in Gersa, or Cursi, on the eastern shore of the Sea of Galilee. And after departing from Gersa and that demon-possessed man, we see that Christ made his way back across the Sea of Galilee to the western shores of the sea.

And it's possible that he returned to that immediate area of Capernaum, where we've spent so much time, especially where Christ was teaching in chapter 4. And we have a good idea that this is the case, because when he arrives, we see that the crowds were waiting for Christ's arrival.

They had already been there prepared for him to come. And as we've seen already now, at least by my count, 12 times in these first five chapters of the book of Mark, Christ is going to minister to the needs of the people at the edge of the Sea of Galilee.

And so in verse 22, as we make our way through, we see that in the midst of this sprawling crowd, and it was a sprawling crowd, Christ was met by a man named Jairus, who we're told was a ruler of the synagogue.

Now, I don't know if anyone here knows what it is to be a ruler of the synagogue, but a ruler of the synagogue was essentially a lay person that had been appointed by the elders of that particular area, that geographical area.

And their job primarily was to look after the needs of the synagogue, really the functional, the practical needs of the synagogue. And so they would be responsible, for instance, for acquiring the scrolls that would be read in the public worship of the synagogue.

They would be required for, much like the elders do in this congregation, recruiting someone to read, and someone to pray, and someone to teach through a particular text of the Old Testament scriptures.

And so in this role, it really was a prestigious role amongst the Jewish people. It was not a Levitical priesthood role, but the kind of role that would be very well esteemed in the Jewish congregation.

And I thought, for those of you that were here now over a year ago, if you remember just our very beginning study of the book of 1 Corinthians, I think the only two people in this room that were here were Amy and Nicole.

But if we remember Sosthenes in 1 Corinthians 1, he was a ruler of the synagogue. We read about him in the book of Acts as well, where he was beat up in Acts chapter 18. It was very likely that he was converted under Paul's ministry.

He was a ruler of the synagogue. And so from village to village and place to place where there was a synagogue, they were either a ruler or multiple rulers. And so here you have this man who is a devout Jew.

Like the Apostle Paul, he is a Hebrew of Hebrews. He's a respected man, a religious leader in his community. Even his name, Jairus, means God enlightens. And despite his elevated role in society, we're told that here he comes to Christ in the midst of this great crowd, and he falls down at Christ's feet.

And we're told he implored him. He cried out. He appealed to Christ for his help. And note this with me, actually, that this is characteristic of every individual, that every main character that Christ interacts with in chapter 5.

We see this with the demon-possessed man. He fell down before Christ. We see this here with Jairus in verses 22 and 23, and again with the woman with the discharge of blood in verse 33, someone that we're going to read about and study about here in a moment, that anyone that receives Christ's help, I want you to notice this right off the bat, anyone that receives Christ's help comes to him not boasting in their own strength, not appealing to their position, but they come as a helpless man or a helpless woman with no hope apart from Christ.

And verse 23 tells us why Jairus came to Christ. He says that his little daughter, we're going to learn in the text that she was 12 years old, is at the point of death. And here Mark uses, when he says at the point of death, he uses the Greek expression eskatos eke.

Now I know there aren't any Greek scholars here, but you might already be familiar with that word eskatos. That's the Greek word that informs our English word for eschatology. It's the study of the last things.

And what Mark is saying when he uses this word is that this woman, this young girl, is in the very last moments of her life. The last moments of death, the lowest point of her about to be, her becoming, I should say, expired.

And it was really an idiomatic expression that was used in that particular time, much like we would say that someone is sinking fast or they're at death's door. Here you have this girl, she is dying, and she's about to fully expire.

And it's here that Jairus pleads with Christ that he might come and lay his hands on his daughter. And he says that she might be well and live. And here we find... I'm sorry, I'm just going to go through a lot of Greek because there's so many important words in this one.

We find the Greek word sozo, for to be well and to live. And oftentimes it's a really unique word that's used to describe salvation, to be saved from one's sins. It denotes salvation. Jairus came to Christ as Savior that his daughter might be saved.

And in this instance, right off the bat, just note this with me, the compassionate, the merciful, the kind and the capable character of Christ in this passage. Verse 24, we see that Mark doesn't dress it up with grandiose words.

There isn't a spectacle at all in the sentence. We're simply told, and Christ went with him. And he went with him. Christ saw this man. He saw the need that he was experiencing. And without a question asked, without any fuss, he went to be with Jairus' daughter.

This is why the suffering servant... Why did Christ come to the world? This is why the suffering servant came. He came to be among his people. Christ came to minister to the great physical and spiritual needs of fallen man.

And so, without another word, Christ went with Jairus. So here we have Christ and Jairus. Now, if I were Jairus, for the parents in the room, for the new parents in the room, for the soon-to-be or hoping-to-be parents in the room, if you were in Jairus' situation, if your young daughter was on death's doorstep, and you had the man that you believed with all your heart, that he could make her well, at least I think about what I would be like in that type of situation.

I would be...

My mind immediately goes to a bodyguard of a celebrity, you know, somewhere on a red carpet or in Hollywood or something like that where there is a mob of adoring fans. Maybe there's paparazzi. And if I were Jairus, I would want to get Christ from point A to point B as fast as I could, without any interruption, without anyone touching him, without any autographs, no selfies.

I would escort Christ with a singular sense of purpose, and I would likely have very little tolerance for anyone getting in the way. He's going to save my daughter.

Get out of the way.

Let's move. But as we see, as Mark does in his gospel, we see included in this narrative an interruption on the way to Jairus' home. And I think Mark includes what some theologians would call this Markan sandwich in the middle to reiterate his intent, to show us, again, the all-merciful, the all-supreme, the all-sovereign qualities of Christ and the important role of faith in approaching him.

The Woman with the Discharge of Blood

And so in verse 24, we're told that a great crowd not only followed Christ, but the passage says in our English translation, thronged about him. This word thronged could also be translated swarmed. Or even compressed, if you want to picture that idea of pushing in on him.

And here we get a picture of Jesus being pressed in on every side by this multitude of Galileans. But in the midst of this crowd, which largely only serves to get in the way, as we've seen crowds do in the book of Mark, there is one woman who reaches in, who comes behind Christ, who reaches out in faith to touch the edge of Christ's garment.

Now, why would this woman, not like Jairus, approach him from the front? Why wouldn't she come with him face to face? Why wouldn't she grab him by the hand or the arm and say, oh sir, won't you please heal me?

It's very possible that it was a superstitious idea on her mind. But it's also not a stretch to say that the reason the woman did not touch Christ, why she did not come to him face to face, was because of her own social status, because of her own uncleanness.

We're going to read as we carry on. In verse 29, Mark uses the Greek word mastix to refer to her ailment. The ESV translates the word disease, but for my brother who loves the King James, and for others, I think the King James really captures the weightiness of her condition.

Brother, in verse 29, how do they translate that last word that describes her condition? Plague. This woman wasn't merely diseased. She was afflicted with a plague. Mark's choice of words tells us that she was whipped, she was afflicted, she was tormented.

This was not only a plague to her, but she, as a result of this menstrual hemorrhage, this bleeding, menstrual bleeding, became a plague to other people. It was a continuous flow of blood that lasted, we're told, for 12 years.

And we're told that not only did she spend all of her available money to seek healing from the doctors around her, but the crude medicine, and I'm not a medical doctor nor a medical expert, but I think we've all heard of crude stories of medicine being practiced in past centuries and millennia.

The crude medicine that these doctors practiced not only didn't make her better, but it made her worse. We're told that she suffered much at their hands. And this is the reason. This is the reason why this woman spent all of her money.

This is the reason why she suffered great pains to be healed. This is the reason why she probably approached Christ from the back and did not grab him by the hand, but just touched the edge of his garment.

It was because under the Levitical law, this woman with this menstrual discharge was labeled unclean. She was an unclean woman. She was to be treated as such. We see the law speak to that in Leviticus chapter 15.

Specifically in verse 26, it says,. Every bed on which she lies, all the days of her discharge, shall be to her as the bed of impurity. In everything, imagine if this was you for a second, dear saint, put yourself in this position.

In everything on which she sits, shall be unclean, as in the uncleanness of her menstrual impurity. And whoever touches these things, not even touches her, but touches the things that she has touched, shall be unclean.

And so just as the demon-possessed man, if you remember that story from last week, just as the demon-possessed man was consigned to the caves and the tombs outside of the town where he was to live amongst the dead, this woman was socially ostracized by her condition.

She was impure. She was undone. And so if you were a woman in that position, you were to stay as far away from others as possible. And if anyone were to come close, you were to warn them, impure, unclean, I'm unclean, don't come near me.

She would have been put out of her family's home. She would have been excluded from day-to-day activities. She would have, well, you'd be hard-pressed to find a man who would want to marry her and himself become unclean perpetually.

She was even disallowed from entering the temple or the synagogue. She was put out of social life, family life, religious life. She was an untouchable in every sense of the word. But believing with all of her heart that Christ could make her well, she brought her impurity into the crowd that day.

She touched Christ, which would have technically rendered him ceremonially unclean. But as we've seen in other instances already, in the cases of the lepers, as we'll see in the future in the cases of the dead, instead of rendering Christ impure, his divine power went out from him and immediately healed her and made her clean.

After 12 years of suffering outside of the camp, we probably don't appreciate the weight of those words, but suffering outside of the camp, away from friends, away from family, away from everything that would be a normal life, tormented by the cruel cures of unsophisticated doctors.

In a moment, immediately, Christ restored this woman's whole life. And when Christ perceived this, no doubt he knew exactly what had happened and who was involved. But it presented an opportunity, when he asked the question, for this woman to meet with Christ face-to-face, to hear from Christ himself that she had been made clean in order that others, her and others, might give praise to God for his salvation in her life.

So she came before him, trembling in fear. That word really hit me, even as I was reading it again just a moment ago. And she told him, those last two words in verse 33, the whole truth. So what's going to happen?

What's going to happen to this woman? She had just violated the Torah as her last hope to find healing in this man, the Lord Jesus Christ. What is Christ going to say to her? Kind of spoils it when we read the text ahead of time.

But verse 34, Christ tells her daughter, just as Jairus was concerned for his 12-year-old daughter, Christ now calls this woman, daughter, your faith has made you well. Go in peace and be healed of your diseases.

Christ cared for this woman just as Jairus cared for his own daughter. And he says that her faith, her belief in Christ's power, her trust in his saving ability is what made her well. Mark, again, employs that word sozo.

By this woman's active faith in Christ, not only was she healed of her physical ailments, but she was saved. Saved from her diseases in full. But even better, saved from her sins. And if there was any doubt, Christ doubles down when he tells her that she can go out from the crowd, he says, in peace.

That's that word, Irenae. It's one of Paul's favorite words. Let me just ask you guys a quick question. When you read Paul's letters, maybe the letter to the Romans or the Corinthians or to Titus or to Timothy, do you ever reflect on when Christ says, or when Paul says those words, grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

Or when he writes to Timothy, he says, grace, mercy, and peace. Have you ever just stopped and considered for a second, what does that mean? What does that look like? Why does Paul greet the saints with that expression, grace and peace?

Well, dear saints, this picture of this woman, this is a graphic display. This is the embodiment of grace to you and peace. God the Son sees this woman, that she is unclean, that she is unworthy, that she is by her incurable condition, unable to approach God or man.

And above her hangs the dire sentence, this dire sentence of lifelong despair, isolation, and a certain lonely death. But Christ, what wonderful words if you're that woman, but Christ, but Christ in his great mercy, in his great grace, in his great kindness, in his great omnipotence.

Christ says to the woman before this crowd of witnesses, he says, essentially, salvation to you. You have been made well. You have been saved. Go in peace. Grace to you and peace. I've seen your faith in me, and by my grace, you have been saved, period.

Jairus’ Daughter Raised to Life

So you've got Jairus meeting Christ. You've got this woman who comes behind Christ, who is saved, not only from her disease, but from her sin by her faith in him. And then lastly, we see Jairus, Jairus' daughter, how Christ revives Jairus' daughter.

In verse 35, as Christ spoke these words, someone came to Jairus and delivered, imagine being in this position, the soul-crushing news, soul-crushing, that his daughter had died. He says, don't trouble the teacher any further.

Perhaps it was at this moment, we don't know, that Jairus' faith was reaching its limits. He believed that Christ could heal an ill daughter, but who can heal a dead daughter? But Christ here overhearing all this in verse 36, he says to Jairus, he says, do not fear, only believe.

And what Christ does here, this is where I think understanding the original languages can be so helpful, he frames this in the present imperative. And what he means by that is this, he's saying, you came to me believing that I could heal your daughter.

When he says, believe, do not fear, believe, he says, do not fear and keep believing, keep believing, persevere in believing,.

Persist,.

Do not doubt. Jairus came to Christ with the same quality of faith as the hemorrhaging woman. Now he needs to persevere in trusting Christ for her healing. He needs to believe. And so Christ gathers his inner circle, Peter, James, and John.

This is the first time that we see this in this book. He gets Jairus and his wife, they get together in the bedroom, or in the home, I should say, and here they find this great commotion, people weeping and wailing.

Imagine this, if we were to transport ourselves into that particular time, coming to a home where someone has just died, you have people who are wailing, moaning and crying at the top of their voices, you've got, Matthew tells us in Matthew chapter 9, you've got flute players that are playing.

What is happening here? It might seem odd to us, but in the first century, in first century Judaism, it was not uncommon to hire professional mourners who would come into your home and join you in your grieving.

And even as I look at your faces, some of you are thinking, what kind of strange idea is that? But it's not too different, actually, from what we do today when we hire funeral homes and musicians and people that will participate in our grieving at a funeral or something like that.

And so Christ comes into this home full of professional mourners. Even one rabbi, he said even the poorest person in Israel should hire at least two flute players and one wailing woman. I don't know where you'd find them in the market, but Christ enters this scene and Christ questions the whole ordeal.

In verse 39, he tells the crowd, the child is not dead, but only asleep. Now, liberal scholars, we'll address liberal scholars for a second, they would come along and they would point out at this point that here Christ performed some kind of resuscitation, that she really was only asleep and she just needed first aid CPR and Christ was the first aider on the scene.

That's not the case. These mourners, they'd been around dead people. They could tell the difference between a living person and a dead person. This girl was dead. But Christ, what he was doing when he said that she was only asleep was using a figure of speech that was common in that particular Jewish apocalyptic literature of that time and he hints that this death is only temporary.

And so in verse 40, we're told that the mourners laughed in Christ's face. They ridiculed him. They humiliated him. When Jairus had faith, this crowd had none. So Christ put them out. He spoke in his native tongue to this girl, Talitha Kumi.

Little girl.

Or even a more endearing term. You see just the kindness of Christ. It can be translated little lady or little lamb. I say to you, arise. And his pronouncement here is a combination of both exceeding gentleness and of emphatic authority.

We're told immediately this 12-year-old girl is resurrected from the dead. She was able to stand, able to walk, able to eat. I don't know, sister, if being a nurse, if that's one of the things that they do is they make sure that people can eat and maybe if you've had surgery, go through a series of checks.

We'll hear Christ sends her to go eat. Go make sure. Go prove that she's completely well. She's fully restored. And then in verse 42, it says that they were immediately overcome with amazement. Jairus' family, the immediate family and probably the disciples too were overwhelmed.

They were astounded. What could this mean? That there was a man on the earth who was so approachable and so attentive to human need and yet so powerful that he could even raise the dead. But Christ charged them to be silent.

Now oftentimes people would ask, why would Christ tell them to be silent? Some commentators would say, well, Christ does not want to interfere with his divine mission and if they weren't to remain silent, then people would pour on more praise and it would disrupt the timeline of Christ's redemption.

But it's probably just as likely if we consider what happened after Christ rose Lazarus from the dead. It's not so much that people would come to praise him, but that people would come to kill him sooner.

So here Christ says,.

Be silent.

Christ’s Mercy, Sovereignty, and the Shape of Saving Faith

So this is our text for today. Now what do we make of this? That was our heavy lifting part. What do we make of this? How do we apply this to us as Christians living in the 21st century? I think for a lot of us, we would read this text, we would appreciate the pulling of the heartstrings and gyrus, the unclean woman here, but what do we make of it?

What is the so what of this text? And I want to take just a few minutes to put before us three pictures, three pictures that this whole scene paints for us. Each of them being intensely practical. If I lost you in the first half.

In the deep digging,.

Just come back. It gets practical here. So in this short account, we see three pictures that are painted. I'll give them to you ahead of time, and then we'll work through them. We see here a picture of Christ as the sovereign, merciful Savior.

Of the world.

That he is both sovereign.

And he is merciful. Here we have a picture of genuine saving faith. Is anyone in this room wondering, am I actually a believer? Am I actually a Christian? We're going to look at what genuine saving faith looks like.

And then here we see a picture of the immediate results of saving faith. So if Christ is what the scriptures say that he is, and if I have placed genuine saving faith in him, what is to come? What is the result in my life?

And so let's consider these three pictures together. First we'll consider this picture of Christ as sovereign, merciful Savior. When Jairus approached Christ on the edge of the sea, you should want to remind us if we go back, that he did not need to barter with Christ to have him come and heal his daughter.

When all human hope was gone, he came to Christ. He believed that Christ had the power to heal. Christ immediately went with him. When the diseased woman reached out to touch the garment of the righteous, only begotten Son of God, it almost reminded me, if anyone remembers back to the story of Uzzah, who reached his hand out to steady the ark.

What happened to Uzzah when he reached out to steady the ark? Does anyone remember? He died. He fell down dead. He dropped dead right then and there. But when this woman, when she reached out to touch the Son of God, the only begotten Son of God, she wasn't struck with lightning.

She didn't fall down dead, but she was healed. When Jairus learned that his daughter had just died, and his faith was near wavering, when Christ appealed to him to continue to trust in his saving ability, that he was willing and able to save his child, when the mourners heaped scorn upon Christ, he did not change his mind.

He remained immutable, unchanging in his mercy, and he brought Jairus' daughter back from the grave. Now, I want you to notice this with me, beloved Christian brother and sister, that Christ is, picture Christ in your own mind right now, Christ is more merciful.

He is kinder. He is more compassionate. He is more concerned with your soul's welfare than you could ever, ever imagine. This is a hard sermon to preach for that reason that I cannot articulate in words how merciful the living Christ is.

And at the same time, Christ is more powerful, omnipotent, holy God, sovereign in all of his ways. He is more authoritative and more capable than any of us could ever imagine. But there's a problem. There is a problem.

And the problem is with us. Many of us, even you, have an incomplete view of Christ. You have an imperfect view of Christ. I was just thinking about human nature as I was working through this text. Some of us, no doubt, there's some of us in this room who major on the mercy of Christ.

Oftentimes, we see that in the liberal camp of Christianity where they try to domesticate Christ. They try to remove his claws, the idea of a Christ that rides on a white horse, whose eyes are a blaze of fire and who's like a blaze of fire and whose tongue is a two-edged sword.

That is, they wouldn't say it, but it's repugnant in their eyes. But some of us, we major on the mercy of Christ. We see Christ as being personable and near in times of trouble. And it's so true. We see him as the wonderful, merciful Savior.

We see him as the good shepherd that leaves the 99 in order to seek out and to find the one lost sheep. For some of you, you regularly reflect on the love and the mercy of Christ. You major on that idea.

Others among us, and this is probably more true of the people in this room, others among us major on the sovereignty and the omnipotence of Christ. Oh, how he is sovereign. How he has power over nature.

How he has power over demons. How he has power over disease and death. And how quick we are to affirm that Christ died for his elect, that he knew them ahead of time, that he will effectually call them to himself.

There is nothing that Christ cannot do. There's a reason why they call it cage-stage Calvinism. When Christians begin to discover the sovereignty of God, it's because it becomes all. You just can't stop talking about it.

So you just need to lock that person up for a period of time so they can simmer down. And for some of us, now that we've discovered the sovereign power of Christ, it's hard to contain it. But what we need to do, I think we would both affirm that these are true, but we have a tendency to lean one way or the other.

And our problem is a problem of emphasis. And here in this Gospel, what Christ does, what he does is he paints a picture that does not emphasize Christ's mercy over his sovereignty. And it does not emphasize his sovereignty over his mercy,.

But it holds both truths up.

In full view as equal. What an amazing thought. If you just think about it, just think about it, that we would have a Savior in the Lord Jesus Christ who is both full in his mercy, in his very personal care for us, that he knows you, that he loves you, that he is working all things together for your eternal good.

Such a thing is almost too much to bear. And yet that he is all-powerful, that there is not one maverick molecule in all of creation, but that he is able to superintend over every detail. So not only does he love you and that he cares about you, but that he is working out every single detail for your eternal good and for his glory.

Such a truth is almost too much to bear. There is a Christ who loves me and that is working his power for my good. Dear saints, how much worry and how much fretting and how many of you today are suffering with cold-heartedness or what we might call spiritual depression.

You just feel like you're in the spiritual doldrums. How much of that would be solved in the blink of an eye? If we could just for a moment take a line, come to the edge of the boat and cast it into the sea of Christ's perfections and fathom the depths of his mercy and of his love for you and fathom the depths of his supreme authority, of his unwavering, of his unchanging love,.

Of his care,.

Of his mercy and of his undying power that he wields even at this very moment for the sake of every man or woman who comes to him by faith. This passage gives us a glimpse at the heart of Christ, the image of the invisible God, the radiance of his glory, the exact imprint of God's nature.

And what we find in God's heart towards his people is not aloofness. It's not hardened severity, but it's a desire and a willingness to calm our fears, to say grace and peace, to say do not fear, only believe.

Persist in believing. Brother and sister, how this ought to drive us to Christ for every need under heaven, that Christ cares for us and that he has the power to do something about it. There was once an English pastor by the name of John Condor and he was born in the 17th, 18th century in 1714 and it was a great time of political tumult.

There was bitterness and division everywhere in the United Kingdom. It's probably not unlike the political situation that we're in in our own day. Just trouble on the horizon. And when John was a young boy, I think maybe even too about the little children in our congregation, just a young boy, his grandfather, full of concern as he held his grandson.

He kissed him. Well, actually, he would have been old enough to remember this, so maybe he wasn't holding him.