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FBC Travelers Rest sermon from September 18, 2022 by Pastor Rhett Burns.
21 through 43 this morning. If you're new with us, we are just going through the book of Mark one paragraph at a time, chapter at a time. We're just going to pick up where we left off last week and that brings us to Mark chapter 5 verse 21 and we have two stories of healing today.
So let's read the words of the living God. Mark 5 21 says this, and when Jesus had crossed again in the boat to the other side, a great crowd gathered about him and he was beside the sea. 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, my little daughter is at the point of death.
Come lay your hands on her that she may be made well and live 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 12 years and who had suffered much under many physicians and had spent all that she had and was no better but rather grew worse.
She had heard the reports about Jesus and came up behind him in the crowd and touched his garment for she said, 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 and Jesus perceiving in himself that power had gone out from him immediately turned about in the crowd and said, who touched my garments?
And his disciple said to him, you see the crowd pressing around you and yet you say 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 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. 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? 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 him except 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. And when he had entered he said to them, why are you making a commotion and weeping?
The child is not dead, but sleeping. And 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. 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 12 years of age 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.
This is the word of God to us this morning. Let's begin by just working our way through these two stories of healing. You see Jesus, he had left the Gentile territory, gone back over the sea, and he is by the sea again.
And so Mark is cluing us in here that Jesus is about to call a few more followers because as we've seen thus far in Mark, Jesus calls disciples beside the sea. And a crowd gathers, as happens to Jesus a lot at this point.
There's something about miracles of healing and exorcism that just draws a crowd apparently. And at that time the ruler of the synagogue, Jairus by name, comes and falls at his feet because his little girl, 12 years old, is gravely ill and he needs her.
He needs Jesus' help. So I want to think about this for just a moment though. How popular, how well thought of is Jesus at this point in time by those in positions of authority in the synagogue? Not very popular, right?
The big-shot religious leaders from Jerusalem have already come to backwater Galilee to try to put a stop to him. They have conspired with the Roman government to try to assassinate him. Jesus has offended the customs of the synagogue and made himself an enemy of the scribes.
And yet, here's the ruler of the synagogue, most likely the chief ruler of the synagogue, the chairman of the board, coming to fall at the feet of Jesus. This man whom he's heard has the power to heal the sick.
And without a word, Jesus goes with him. And so does the crowd. They thronged about him, verse 24 tells us. And so you got to imagine, this has to frustrate Jairus, right? I mean it's like an ambulance getting bogged down in traffic.
They're trying to get to his dying daughter and they can't get there because of the crowd. And then Jesus just stops in his tracks. He sensed power had gone out of him. There's a woman there who's had a discharge of blood for 12 years.
Don't you think about what this means for her? You see, it's not just the disease that's her problem that that is very much a big problem. As bad as that would be, the physical problem isn't her only problem because according to Leviticus 15, she is ceremonially unclean because of this illness.
Which means she can't participate in any of the festival meals like Passover or Pentecost or the festival of booths or feast of booths. She cannot worship in the temple or in the synagogue. She can't enter into the holy city of Jerusalem.
She cannot participate in the life of the community because she would transmit her uncleanness to anyone that she came into contact with. Very likely, if she had been married, she's probably divorced by this point.
And on top of all that, she has the discomfort of being in bad health. Her ceremonial uncleanness is like ceremonial death, cutting her off from just social, family, and religious life. It's a bad situation.
Death ultimately is not a physical problem in the ultimate sense. It's not just the separation of soul from the body. Rather, death is ultimately a spiritual problem. The separation of body and soul from God.
And so by being ceremonially unclean, she is ceremonially exiled from God's presence. She can't go to worship. She can't go be among God's people. This is how bad her situation is. And she's tried to fix it.
It's not like she's just accepted it. She's tried everything that she could think of to fix it. She's tried every home remedy. She's tried every essential oil, every special diet, every as-seen-on-TV miracle device, every old wives tale, every superstition.
And she had been to every doctor. And none of it had worked. In fact, Mark tells us that her circumstances, her situation, her illness got worse. She had spent all her money on cures that did not cure.
And she is living at the corner of rock bottom and wit's end. And Jesus comes around the corner. She's heard about him. She's heard that he heals, that he helps. And she thinks to herself, maybe he could heal her.
Maybe he would help her. Maybe he wouldn't even have to know. She could just reach out and touch his coat. Maybe that would do the trick. So that's what she does. And immediately she's healed. Her blood dries up.
She perceives that she has been made well in an instant. Kind of reminds us of the stormy sea that Jesus calmed in an instant. We looked at last week. Then Jesus stopped. Oh no. Will he be angry? She might have wondered.
Who touched my garments? He said. His disciples are a little bit incredulous. What do you mean who touched her garments? And there's a whole crowd of people just pressing in on you. What do you mean who touched me?
And imagine yourself as old Jairus at this point. I imagine he's frustrated, impatient, and maybe a little bit fearful. But Jesus wants to know. Who touched me? And so with fear and trembling the woman makes herself known.
She risked public shame. She risked Jesus' anger. For she unclean. One who is unclean dared to touch him. And she came. She fell before him. And she told him the whole truth, Mark says. She told him her whole sad story.
And how does Jesus respond? Daughter, your faith has made you well. Go in peace and be healed of your disease. Calm, forthright, gentle, generous Jesus. It's a picture we get here. And at that moment, at this woman's moment of glory.
The moment that she had been waiting over a decade for. Her moment of healing. Her moment of relief. Her moment of gratitude. At that moment Jairus gets some terrifying news. His daughter has died. They come from his house.
Don't trouble the teacher anymore. Leave Jesus alone, they say. Can you imagine how crushing that would have been for Jairus? I imagine him thinking, if only I'd have come to Jesus sooner. If only the crowds would have left us alone.
If only that woman hadn't touched Jesus' garment. If only Jesus had been quicker. If only we had gone by a different route. If only, if only, if only my daughter would be alive. Well Jairus may have been despondent, but Jesus was not.
The same Jesus who was asleep in the stern of the boat during the storm at sea. Now he just calmly said to Jairus, don't fear, only believe. Do not fear, only believe. And he took Peter and James and John along with Jairus and went to Jairus' home.
And there was a great commotion. People were wailing and weeping loudly. And he entered the house and he questioned them. Why are you making a commotion and weeping? The child is not dead, but sleeping.
And again this is reminiscent of Jesus on the boat when he goes to the disciples when they wake him up. And he says, why are you afraid? Have you still no faith? The people at the house laughed at Jesus.
Jesus kicked them out of the house with some measure of force. And then he took Peter and James and John and Jairus and Jairus' wife into the little girl's room. And he took her by the hand and he says, talitha kumri.
Which means, I say to you, arise. And immediately she got up and she started walking and they were all amazed. This is a wonderful story, right? This is a wonderful story and as we draw a few things out from this story I hope we'll see that it's even more wonderful than we might see on a first reading.
I want us to learn five things from this passage this morning. I want us to learn five things and the first is this. Everybody needs Jesus. Everybody needs Jesus. Needing Jesus is not unique to any social status.
It is not unique to any economic class. It is not unique to any religious position or stage of life or any other designator that you might think of. Everybody, regardless of their place in this world, needs Jesus.
In this passage we'll see a prominent man and an outcast woman. Someone rich and someone poor. Someone with family and one who has lost her family. Someone at the peak of society and someone at the bottom.
One who is accepted in and one who is cast out and rejected. We see an adult man and an adult woman and a young child and every last one of them need Jesus. Their need is highlighted for us. Sin and the effects of sin do not stop at our class borders or barriers.
Sorrow spreads to every son and daughter of Adam. You can't earn enough money or rise to enough prominence or be dear enough to enough people to not need Jesus. And you'll never be too low, too poor, or too rejected to be beyond the help of Jesus.
Every last one of us stands in need of the of healing and help from Jesus. But it's pride. It's pride that keeps us from seeing our need. Now on the one hand, pride might be obvious. The high status man can be obviously proud.
Seeing himself as self-sufficient and not need of help from anyone, including Jesus. But the one who is low can also be proud. Thinking so much of himself that he is so far beyond even the help of the Son of God.
It's also pride. It's pride at both ends. But God gives grace to the humble. God opposes the proud, but he gives grace to the humble. And both Jairus and the bleeding woman humbly came to Jesus. They humbly reached out to Jesus.
They humbly bowed and fell at the feet of Jesus. Because they both knew their need and they both thought Jesus could do something about it. Do something to help them. This leads us to the second thing that I want us to learn this morning and that is a little faith goes a long way.
A little faith goes a long way. You see, neither Jairus nor this woman had a particularly fully developed or well-established or even mature faith in Christ. What they had was a really big need and a little bit of faith that Jesus could do something to help them.
Kent Hughes says that despair is often a prelude to grace. And both of these people, in these stories, were in despair and they were both in need of God's grace. Jairus in fear for his daughter's life, the woman with the disease that she could not beat.
Hughes goes on to say that the woman's faith might have been superstitious, uninformed, or even presumptive, but here's the thing about it. It pleased Christ. He saw her faith and her faith made her well.
It wasn't her touch that made her well. There was nothing about the physical properties of Jesus' garment that healed her of her disease. Jesus said, daughter, your faith has made you well. In Mark chapter 4, we saw where Jesus said the kingdom of God is like a mustard seed.
It's the smallest of all seeds, but it grows up to be the largest plant in the garden. And even the birds of the air come and make their nest in it. Elsewhere, Jesus will use a similar analogy with a mustard seed to say that the faith the size of a mustard seed, the smallest of all seeds, has great power.
And we can reason then that faith the size of a mustard seed can also grow up tall. A little faith, a little faith goes a long way. Because what makes the difference, what makes the difference is not how much faith you can muster up.
It's not what kind of emotions you can muster up within you. It's not how much belief you can stir up within you. What makes the difference is the one you have faith in. So do you find yourself in a situation where the odds are stacked against you?
Do you find yourself in an impossible situation, in great need, in dire straits? Well I would say to you what Jesus said to Jairus, do not fear, only believe. Because a little faith goes a long way. Your faith may not be great, but the one you have faith in, if he be Jesus Christ the Son of God, is great.
The one you have faith in is great, and that is what matters, and that is what makes all the difference. A little faith goes a long way. Jesus sees it, Jesus honors it, and Jesus develops it and grows it.
Third thing I want us to learn today from this passage is that Jesus puts the curse in reverse. Jesus reverses the curse of death. Don't you think about it. Throughout the book of Mark we've seen where Jesus has touched unclean people.
He touched the leper. He touched the bleeding woman. He touched the dead child. And he did this without becoming unclean in himself, while cleansing the one who had been unclean. This is backwards from how it had worked under the Mosaic system.
You see in the Mosaic order of things, death spread, uncleanness spread, but life did not. Cleanness did not. I want to read to you from Haggai chapter 2 to illustrate this point. Haggai chapter 2 verses 11 through 13 say, ask the priest about the law.
If someone carries holy meat in the fold of his garment and touches with his fold bread or stew or wine or oil or any kind of food, does it become holy? The priest answered and said, no. Then Haggai said, if someone who is unclean by contact with a dead body touches any of these, does it become unclean?
And the priest answered and said, it does become unclean. And so what we see here from the law of Moses is that uncleanness spreads, but cleanness does not. Holiness does not. But Jesus reverses this.
You see, he touches the leper and he does not become leprous. He does not become unclean. Rather, the leper is healed and made clean. And Jesus touches the bleeding woman, but he does not become unclean.
Rather, she is healed of her disease and she becomes clean. He touches the young girl's corpse and he does not become unclean. Rather, she is raised back to life and eats breakfast. You see, Jesus' life, death is not a problem for him.
Jesus' life and life flows from him. And so life begins to spread because Jesus reverses things. Death came by the first Adam, but life comes by the second Adam. Jesus is the second Adam. Romans 5 17 says, for if, because of one man's trespass, death reign through that one man, much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man Jesus Christ.
Do you want to live? Do you want life? And do you want life abundantly? Do you want to be clean and to have clean hands and ascend the hill of the Lord? Well, come to Christ. He is the way and the truth and the life.
He is the only source of life. You're not going to find true and everlasting life anywhere else. Sin will beckon and it will make promises that it cannot deliver on. It will promise life, but you will only find death there.
But Christ, Christ gives life. Come to Christ. Life spreads. This is why Jesus sends the church, those to whom he has given eternal life. This is why Jesus sends the church out into the dead world to conquer it and to resurrect it.
This leads to our fourth thing I want you to learn today from this passage. That is, Jesus is the resurrection. Thus far in Mark, all of, all the healings have been building to this point, to get to this resurrection here, where Jesus says to the little girl, arise.
Mark Horne, in his book on the Gospel of Mark, points out that this healing is the fulfillment of all the ones that have come before it in the book of Mark. So like the man with the unclean spirit back in chapter 1, there's a connection with the synagogue.
In that case, Jesus went to the synagogue. In this case, the synagogue ruler comes to Jesus. And like with that synagogue exorcism, there is a command to keep it quiet afterwards. And like with Peter's mother-in-law, when Jesus took her by the hand and healed her of her high fever, he takes this little girl's hand and he tells her to rise.
And like with the leper, he touches one who is unclean. And like with the paralytic, one who cannot move begins to walk at the command of Jesus. And like with the man who had the withered hand, Jesus heals despite unbelief.
The garrisoned demoniac had been delivered from among the tombs, and this prefigures the resurrection of Jairus' daughter that comes right on the heels of that. And I also want you to notice the connection between the two in these story.
The woman with the issue of blood and Jairus' daughter. They're both called daughter in the text, and they both have 12 years. The little girl is 12 years old, and the woman had this illness for 12 years.
Mark is connecting these two things together. And all of these miracles thus far, they find their fulfillment when that little girl stands up. In Mark chapters 4 and 5, we see Jesus' power again and again on display.
His power over nature when he stills the stormy sea. His power over demons when he sends the legion into the pigs and the pigs over the cliff. His power over sickness when he heals the woman. And his power over death itself in raising the little girl.
Jesus' power is great. So great that not even death is a match for him. For Jesus is the resurrection. And this resurrection in Mark chapter 5, it is pointing to the resurrection of Jesus himself at the end of Mark.
The resurrection that is coming. And his resurrection that is coming is the down payment guarantee of our very own resurrection for those who believe. This week as I was preparing this sermon, I was I was thinking a lot about the Isdales.
Now Allison was older than 12 years old, like the girl in this story, but she was still Robbie and Ruby's little girl. And when I got the call on Friday that Allison had died, I was right here in in this section of the sermon writing about the resurrection.
Allison's death is the most recent. I know many of you in here have experienced loss in recent months and in years. You've experienced the loss of loved ones. I simply want to remind you of the hope of the resurrection this morning.
That for all who are in Christ Jesus, trusting and believing in Christ, Jesus is going to say it again. Arise. We can be comforted in times of death by the hope of the resurrection. And we can be certain of the resurrection of believers because Jesus himself was resurrected.
And we're united in him by faith. So take comfort in the resurrection of Jesus. And this resurrection here in Mark 5 points to his. And his is the down payment guarantee of ours and of those who have died in faith.
The last thing we learned this morning is that we are raised to table fellowship. This miracle is the second time in Mark where Jesus has gone into a family home and he's taken a female by the hand and raised her up and then food is served.
This happened back in chapter 1 with Peter's mother-in-law. She had a high fever. Jesus went, took her by the hand, raised her up. She was healed and immediately she began to serve them. And we noted back in Mark chapter 1 this principle that that Jesus raises us up to serve.
Jesus raises us up to serve. And I believe what we have here is an allusion to baptism. Baptism was the beginning of Jesus's public service. In baptism you you go into the water like death and you're raised up out of the water like resurrection.
And you're baptized into service. You're raised up out of the waters to serve in Christ's kingdom. And then here with Jairus's daughter, she's raised up. Jesus takes her by the hand. She's raised up and then she is served.
She begins to eat. She's given something to eat. And I believe in this miracle what we have is an allusion to or a picture of the Lord's supper. For not only are we raised to serve but we are also raised to eat.
We have table fellowship with God. We're raised to dine with Jesus and have table fellowship with one another, God's people. And this too points us to the resurrection. It points us to the marriage supper of the Lamb in heaven.
I want to read to you from Revelation chapter 19. Then I heard what seemed to be the voice of a great multitude like the roar of many waters and like the sound of mighty peals of thunder crying out hallelujah for the Lord our God the Almighty reigns let us rejoice and exult and give him the glory for the marriage supper of the Lamb has come and his bride has made herself ready it was granted her to clothe herself with fine linen bright and pure for the fine linen is the righteous deeds of the Saints and the angel said to me write this.
Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of lamb. This is pointing to heaven when the bride of Christ the church sits down and feasts with Jesus the bride bridegroom the bride of Christ sits down to feast with Jesus the bridegroom.
Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb. Will you be there. Do not fear only believe believe. Jesus says is your faith small. A little faith goes a long way. Fan it into flame.
Scripture say that Jesus is the author and the perfecter of our faith. He's the perfecter that means he is the one who takes it and he develops it and he grows it up into eternal life. Do not fear only believe.
Let's pray father in heaven. I pray that we would be marked as those who believe. Let us not have fear of death. Let us believe knowing that a little faith goes a long way. That you take our imperfect faith.
You take our weak faith and you take it and you you develop it you honor it you strengthen it you grow it and it grows up into eternal life. For you are life. You are the resurrection and the life. And that life spreads.
Father we thank you for that. We thank you for the reversal of things. Death came by the one man the first Adam. But life eternal everlasting life comes by the second. If there's any one in here who's not a believer.
What. I pray. That you work in their hearts right now that they might believe. And maybe their belief is small and maybe it's shaky and unsteady weak. Lord I pray that you would assure them that a little faith goes a long way.
That faith the size of a mustard seed has great power. And Lord we strengthen us all. For those who are grieving we comfort them with the truth of the resurrection. And Lord we be near to all of us in Christ's name.
I pray amen.
