The King Over Death

Covenant Baptist Church iconCovenant Baptist Church

2 views

Sermon by Josh Rice from Mark 5:21-43.

0 comments

00:00
Mark 5, 21 through 43, and then I'll pray for us. 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.
00:14
One of the synagogue officials named Yairis came up and on seeing him, fell at his feet and implored him earnestly saying, my little daughter is at the point of death.
00:22
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.
00:31
A woman who had had a hemorrhage for 12 years and had endured much at the hands of many physicians and had spent all that she had, it was not helped at all, but rather had grown worse.
00:41
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,
00:48
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
00:56
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?
01:05
And his disciples said to him, you see the crowd pressing in on you and you say, who touched me? And he looked around to see the woman who had done this, but the woman fearing and trembling, aware of what had happened to her, came and fell down before him and told him the whole truth.
01:19
And he said to her, daughter, your faith has made you well. Go in peace and be healed of your affliction.
01:25
While he was still speaking, they came from the house of the synagogue official saying, your daughter has died. Why trouble the teacher anymore?
01:32
But Jesus, overhearing what was being spoken, said to the synagogue official, do not be afraid any longer, only believe.
01:39
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 commotion and people loudly weeping and wailing.
01:50
And entering in, he said to them, why make a commotion and weep? The child has not died, but is asleep.
01:55
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.
02:04
Taking the child by the hand, he said to her, Talitha, come, which translated means, little girl,
02:09
I say to you, get up. Immediately, the girl got up and began to walk for she was 12 years old.
02:15
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.
02:23
Let's pray. Father, your word is alive.
02:32
Lord, it is powerful, just as you are, even 2 ,000 years later. Lord, we pray for your word to pierce through us.
02:42
Lord, that you would use the teaching of your word to sanctify us. Lord, that we would listen closely, put away all distractions, worries, and cares at home.
02:52
Lord, that we would be attentive to the words that you will speak to us through Josh.
02:58
Lord, we pray for the Holy Spirit to be present this morning, that you'd fill Josh up. Lord, we pray that you would help us to worship you well this morning.
03:09
Lord, we love you and we praise you. It's in Christ's name, amen. Turn to Mark 5, and if you get bored with me,
03:16
I would like you to look around this passage before and after, because I harp on it all the time that context is crucial to understanding why certain stories are where they are, and none come to mind more in recent memory in understanding why this passage is here than looking behind it and looking ahead of it at what's going on, and what we will see is that there's a story of kingship and also a story of faith that's being unfurled by Mark as he writes, and it's interesting with Mark with his brevity and the way that he is short and he gets to the point, the things that he decides to expound on more than the other gospel writers, and we have two of those cases in a row, where last week we looked at the demoniac, where Mark gives us the most detail -laden account of that encounter, and here we have a very detail -laden account of Yairus' daughter and also the woman with the issue of blood, and so we should stop and look at that, and an author that's so brief, that's so punchy with the way that he decides what he's going to write, that he gives us furled -out details on this and unpacks.
04:22
I think it occurs to me as a Reformed pastor in an
04:27
America where we have seen for a long time the excesses of the hyper -charismatic movement, where basically we put healing on people and we say, hey, if you're not healed, then that's not because of Jesus, that's because of you, and it's a treadmill of works and a treadmill of doubting
04:46
God's justification as grace, that we can look at passages like this and immediately get uncomfortable, and I don't want to do that this morning.
04:54
What I want to look at is what is Mark doing here and is God truly the
05:00
God of healing and the God over death, and do we believe that today? So by way of context, if we back up a couple of clicks, we would see that Jesus was shown to be the
05:11
Lord over nature in chapter four, as he was out on the Sea of Galilee and the storms were tossing and crashing over the side of the boat, and it looked like the disciples and Jesus, who was asleep in the boat, were gonna die, and the disciples show little faith.
05:26
They are afraid, and they don't know who's in the boat with them, not really. They have an orthodox confession, but their belief is not there, and Jesus rebukes them for that.
05:34
We saw a series of rebukes, but at the end of that story, we saw Jesus calmed the storm with his words.
05:41
He is the King over nature. Nature obeys his commands, just like the most loyal subject obeys the edicts of the
05:49
King, and then last week, we saw that Jesus has mastery over Satan and the entire spiritual realm.
05:56
All of the heavenly creatures, Jesus has complete dominion over them. They come and they confess his lordship, even though they hate him, and he banishes them.
06:07
He has complete authority. They obey his commands immediately. That's what we saw last week, that he has mastery over the spiritual realm, and today, we're gonna see a first fruit, a whiff, so to speak, of what's coming in all of the gospels and the greatest event of human history, which is
06:25
Christ's final victory over death, but here we see a foreshadowing of Christ's power over death, of God's infinite, always power over death that he's held from the very beginning of creation and that he holds today, and in the middle of that, we get a sandwich where the meat is the woman with the issue of the bleeding, and that seems like a lesser story, but I don't think it is.
06:50
I think that Mark situates it in the middle because it's a focal point, because there's something going on here where there's the talk about the system that Jesus is in, his power over that entire system, and there's an undercurrent going through this whole thing of cleanliness, cleanliness, so without further ado or introduction, let's get into it.
07:12
I've given this a three -parter, and what I wanna look at first is the bread on the top part of the sandwich, and this is
07:18
Yairus and his desperation, his desperation, so he's been waiting. Jesus went across the lake.
07:24
He had an encounter with the demoniac in the land of the Gentiles because he sent this man, the demon -possessed man, out to be the first missionary to the
07:33
Gentile cities of Decapolis across the lake, and now he comes back. It was like he had a single mission.
07:40
He accomplishes that mission. He sails back across the Sea of Galilee, and we find from Luke's account that the crowds have been waiting for him to come back, so when he gets back, there is a mass of people, multitudes, sitting on the shore.
07:55
You could see them looking out for Christ to come back across the sea, and he comes across, and there is no rest for the weary because now when he sits on the shore, there's a throng of people just crowding around him, and you can imagine.
08:08
I think we lose it in our coldness. As Yairus is looking out, you can imagine him, this well -to -do man, this foreman, really the executor of the whole temple in the area.
08:20
He would have been one of the upper crust of society, and so we see contrast right away, that the woman who's a complete outcast is put in contrast with this man who is really the foreman of the whole temple.
08:31
He would have been held in high esteem by everyone in society, and we find him, just like the commoners, looking out over the sea, waiting for Jesus to come because the object of Yairus' faith, out of desperation, is that he knows that his daughter, his 12 -year -old daughter, is as good as dead, and there's one hope left for her, and that is this healer that he's heard about, this man who has performed these miracles, and so Yairus looks out, and he's waiting.
09:01
He's waiting, he's waiting. The desperation has to be rising. Matthew gives us, in his account, that he says that the daughter is dead.
09:10
Mark says, at the point of death. I would take that, in combining those, I would say that his daughter is as good as dead.
09:17
There's nothing else medically that can be done for her. We don't know what the disease is, but we know that there had to be terror in that house, absolute terror.
09:26
Can you imagine, whether rich or poor, can you imagine your 12 -year -old girl laying in the bed,
09:34
I mean, I have a 12 -year -old girl, so I try not to run myself off the ledge here, lifeless, as every day goes by, getting worse and worse, until there's unconsciousness, lack of alertness, and the father just grows more and more desperate, and he clings to this one hope, and this one hope is this man that maybe he's seen, but he's definitely heard about, and so we see him with the posture.
10:02
The posture is, I can't wait for Jesus to get back on this side of the shore, because I have this one request to make of him.
10:09
If I can make this request, if he would just grant me this thing, then my daughter will live. What faith, what faith?
10:17
And so, Yairus comes to Jesus, and he explains, my little daughter is at the point of death, please come, please come, that by coming, you may lay your hands on her, so that she will be saved and live.
10:29
This is where reform doctrine becomes so beautiful. Do you understand that Yairus is given this faith?
10:38
Because faith is measured by its direct object. We have faith in all kinds of things. Every person that's alive has faith that they're gonna get up out of bed in the morning, and that the sun's gonna come up, that the earth is not gonna melt because of solar flares.
10:51
We all have faith. The definition of faith, the goodness of faith, depends on the object of the faith, okay?
10:59
And so, the object of Yairus' faith is in the one true God, and he knows that there is one hope, and he knows that if Jesus would come, if he would just come,
11:07
I know there's these masses of people, but my 12 -year -old daughter is about to die, if you will just come and lay your hands on her, she will be saved, she will be saved.
11:17
So what is Jesus' response? Well, there's a lesson to be taught here, and Jesus' response is that he's going to go.
11:27
He is going to go to this house because there's something going on under the surface. Jesus is going to show that he has power over death.
11:34
Jesus is gonna show also for us that we need to know, because we have been hard on the scribes and the Pharisees so far,
11:39
Mark, have we not? We often forget that there were people of Christ in the temple, and that there were people who follow
11:47
Jesus who were in the synagogues, that were struggling, that were following the way, even though there was heavy persecution and heavy rejection for following that way, and Yairus is just such a man, that he's a man that's gonna be saved in the midst of the temple, because Jesus is constantly working and ruling, even in the midst of his enemies, in the darkest places that we can imagine.
12:09
And it just so happens, in a dangerous way, that the darkest place we can imagine in New Testament, in the
12:15
New Testament time, is the synagogue. This is where the synagogue of Satan is being set up, where people are being denied the healing power of Christ, where people are being denied faith, and they are being taught that you should continue to sacrifice animals, even in the midst of the perfect sacrifice, being on the scene.
12:33
So Jesus goes. And here's where I wanna make some points of application before we move to the meat here.
12:41
I think we find in our Christian walk that we have times of desperation, and at those times, it's much easier for us to become very dependent on God, to cry out in prayer, to cry out in lamentation, to cry out in petition and pleading.
13:01
And then God so faithfully answers our prayers, and then, like those who crossed over the
13:08
Red Sea and saw the miracles of God in the land of Egypt, we forget. My dad prayed this morning that we would remember
13:19
God's healing hand on my little niece a few weeks ago, and it just struck me when he prayed that that it fades into the background so quickly, and it's so easy for us to forget.
13:33
But see, God keeps his people, and he keeps our faith, and one of the ways that he does that is by bringing us into trials, because trials and tragedies sharpen our dependence.
13:45
The greatest times of crying out to God in my life were the times when I felt in my human needs that I needed him the most.
13:54
And so my encouragement and my exhortation to us right now is to let that not be so, to understand that we live in desperation all the time, that we depend on God for new morning mercies every single day, that every breath that we draw is a gift of God, because in Colossians 1, we are told that Jesus holds together all things with the power of his thought.
14:16
That means that if Jesus stops thinking about us, the whole world blows up. It will not be held together.
14:25
So why do we wait for tragedy to draw us into dependence? And then, you know what happens, is when we become independent, and we start forgetting about God's provision over us, what happens is then we are brought into a time of trial where our faith will be sharpened, and what do we do?
14:40
We grumble at God for bringing us into trial. So I want us to look,
14:45
I want us to look at Yairus here, and I want us to emulate that faith in times of trial, that we would fix our hope on the one place where there is hope, and we would do as he did, because today, it's all good news.
14:58
This whole passage is good news. It's the good news of Christ healing, it's the good news of his power. And so Yairus trusts it, and Jesus goes along the way, and now we get to the meat.
15:08
We have the desperation of spiritual destitution. As Jesus is walking to Yairus' house, the throngs of people are pushing in on him.
15:17
I can't imagine. It would make someone like me, look, I don't really like a bunch of people being around me, and I definitely don't want a bunch of people touching me, and so as you're walking around on this dusty road, people are just grabbing onto him.
15:31
They're pushing around him. It's kind of like making your way through, like, I don't know, I can't imagine a worse place than being in New York City, like, with the throngs of people pushing on you.
15:41
I can't stand it, that's why I live in Arkansas. This is the situation, and Jesus knows this, right?
15:47
We know, we're given the reminder in the Gospels over and over again that Jesus knows the thoughts of man, that he knows the motivations, that he is going to a place at the appointed time.
15:56
Even the demons confessed last week that there was a time fixed for their judgment. And so as Jesus walks, he knows that there is going to be this encounter, and yet, he lets this encounter happen, and it plays out because we learn much about faith from this woman.
16:12
So this woman, let's set her up. You can't imagine a more desperate situation than her, and it's not primarily about her sickness.
16:21
It's about the consequences of her sickness. So to, in family inclusive, let's say it this way.
16:27
This woman has had unstoppable menstrual bleeding for 12 years. This has made her ceremonially defiled and unclean.
16:35
So she has been a social outcast for 12 years, unable to come into the temple, unable to worship
16:42
God with her people, unable to make commerce, unable to do anything that would let you tread through society.
16:50
Even the doctors that she calls would be hesitant to touch her because to touch her is to yourself become defiled and to have to go through ceremonial washing.
17:00
And Bart gives us this detail that Luke doesn't. Interesting, Luke, the doctor, just tells us that she had not had relief from the doctors.
17:06
Mark goes one step further, and he tells us that she had endured much at the hands of many physicians.
17:13
She's gone to every doctor in the country. She is making the rounds. And if you've ever been in this boat,
17:19
I know that there's some who have. There is the frustration of going from doctor to doctor and having no diagnosis, not understanding what's going on.
17:27
It's a mystery. It just keeps happening, and no one has any idea about how to stop it.
17:33
I know there's people that know that pain. And what happens is the bills just keep piling up. See, medical care was always expensive, right?
17:41
Even in these days, this woman, she has been thrown out because of her unclean status, but she's also lost all of her money because she would give everything that she has to be able to come back into the temple and worship her
17:56
God. That's the situation. She is destitute. She is absolutely hopeless, except that she's heard about Jesus.
18:06
Do you see that? She'd spent all that she had, had not been helped at all, but rather had gotten worse.
18:13
All of her attempts had made it worse. After hearing about Jesus, she came up in the crowd behind him and touched his garment.
18:23
So faith comes from hearing. She had heard about this healer, and she was saying to herself, if I just touch his garments,
18:34
I will be saved from this. Let me stop a minute and just ask a cold editorial question.
18:42
Why does she think that? What basis does she have for believing that?
18:49
That she can touch his garment? There's nothing to see there. There's no reason for her to believe this, except that we are told time and time again that man does not look for God, not a single one.
19:03
No one is searching for God. Everyone is going about their own way, seeking their own pleasure.
19:11
But this woman has been given this faith, and she knows, she knows in this crowd, that if she can just touch the hem of his garment, that she will be saved from this, that she will not be an outcast anymore, that she will not suffer with this malady anymore, but she can be brought back into the temple.
19:27
Where did the faith come from? Well, God used the means of her hearing and believing. She heard about Jesus and his healing ministry, and she heard about him preaching authoritatively.
19:40
So we see two things, right? Yairus, the temple man, the guy who's over it all, who has wealth, who has status, and yet he's been laid low because all of your wealth and your status does not protect you from death knocking at the door of your family.
19:56
And he's laid low. And then we have the woman who is outcast, who is destitute, who everyone would look at her and veer away.
20:04
You don't wanna touch her. Her being in the midst of this crowd is a bad thing societally.
20:10
She is taking an awful risk here because she defiles anyone that she touches, she makes them unclean, and she has heard the stories of Christ and believed.
20:19
Just like Yairus. Two people, totally different social situations, but through hearing, there is faith.
20:28
So then she touches. She touches the garment. And we get a curious passage.
20:33
Calvin believes that the power that came, that Jesus perceives leaving him is the power of the
20:38
Holy Spirit to save. I'm not sure about that. What I do know is this. What I do know is that Jesus knows that he has healed, that he has exerted authority and power over nature by this touching.
20:51
That is the means by which it's been expressed. And so he knows because he was there to do this.
20:57
Make no mistake. Jesus' ministry is carefully, carefully planned. And so she is in the vicinity.
21:04
She is allowed to be near him because of God's providence and God's timing. But the woman is now afraid because Jesus calls out, who touched me?
21:13
Who touched me? And the disciples are going, what are you talking about? Everybody touched you. That's what they're saying.
21:20
A hundred people touched you, Jesus. What do you mean? But the woman knew exactly what he meant because to touch his garment meant that after 12 years of suffering, it's all gone in an instant when she touches that garment because her faith healed her.
21:38
Now, did she conjure up this faith? This is where the faith healing charismatic stuff goes crazy because we think that what we can do is psychologically drum up enough faith to make
21:49
God do what we want. But instead, faith comes from God and the means that he uses is hearing.
21:56
So faith comes by hearing the word of God and then by hearing, we act. And the acting we do is to trust in God, to trust in his promises.
22:05
That's what the woman does. She's heard of the healing and she knows that she has to get close and that if she can just lay hands on Jesus, that she'll be healed and she is healed.
22:15
And when Jesus calls it out, she is afraid. Luke says in Luke 8, 47, when the woman saw that she had not escaped notice, she came trembling and falling down before him, she declared in the presence of all the people the reason why she had touched him and how she had been immediately healed.
22:32
Do you understand that it doesn't matter your social station either? Every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that Jesus is
22:39
God, that he is the Lord. Yairus comes and he kneels and he worships.
22:44
The woman trembles because she's not stupid. She knows what's just happened.
22:49
She knows that something very supernatural happened and that she's being called out and she's in the midst of this crowd as an outcast and that's a dangerous place for her to be.
22:57
And when Jesus calls out, she is afraid, but get this, no one sneaks into the kingdom of God.
23:04
There is no sneaking in. We don't get to be stealth Christians. You don't get to have no confession.
23:11
You don't get to just believe it in your heart and not say anything or do anything. The Bible has no concept of that.
23:17
Even the man on the cross, he confesses with his mouth that day. Lord, save me.
23:23
Jesus says he would be with him that day in paradise. This woman is, she has every reason to wanna be quiet here and just take her healing and to slip off, but Jesus doesn't allow that because Jesus is a
23:33
God of confrontation. If you want the mercy of the cross, then you will deal with the confrontation of the cross because the cross is a stench in the nostrils of the world.
23:43
There is no way to come in and reconcile with the world through the cross because the cross amplifies and it shows the rebellion of man.
23:53
If you don't believe me, read John three and don't stop at 316, go the way through the rest where it says that he has shed light and those who are in the darkness hated the light because the light showed their evil deeds.
24:05
This woman has had her faith in Christ and now she's called out and she's afraid and she should be afraid.
24:13
I think we're gonna get this. She should be afraid, but she's afraid of the right thing. She's afraid of the right person because to fear
24:21
God is wisdom. To fear anything else, hear me, to fear anything else is foolish.
24:32
Is God in control or is he not? Is God sovereign over everything that goes under the sun or is he not?
24:42
Because if he is, then to fear other things is to be in rebellion against God.
24:49
We must fear God. And so we see the truth of her salvation.
24:54
She is saved from her sickness, but her faith has also healed her because Jesus comments on it, doesn't he?
25:02
And it's weird, it's interesting. He says, daughter, your faith has saved you.
25:08
Go in peace and be healed of your affliction. This is a curious thing that he calls her daughter.
25:16
That's not a normal thing for Jesus to say, but it shows the loving kindness of God towards the brokenhearted, towards those who are outcast because what
25:25
Jesus has said now is, my daughter, you are in the kingdom. You are in the family.
25:32
That's what you call a daughter, right? A son or a daughter is to bestow a privilege and a place on people, right?
25:40
If you're my daughter, that means I will protect you. If you're my daughter, that means that you've come into my house.
25:46
If you're my daughter, that means that you get all of the privileges of being one of my family.
25:53
And so that's what Jesus bestows on her. She has a saving faith. And the saving faith heals her of her physical illness, but more importantly, the saving faith heals her of her disconnection with the
26:08
God of glory. And she is in the kingdom now. And we know the fruit of this because when he calls out to her, she speaks the whole truth, as scary as it is, as scary as it is.
26:18
She says, what had happened? And he responds and says, your confession is true, right?
26:24
Daughter, your faith has saved you. Who else do we know of that faith saved? Well, last week.
26:31
The faith of the demoniac saved him. And what was his response? He wanted to follow
26:36
Jesus. And Jesus said, you will follow me, but you're gonna follow me a different way. You're gonna go back to Decapolis and you're gonna tell everybody what happened.
26:44
Do you think this woman told everybody what happened? Do you think that in this town, this woman who has been outside, destined, she had to look terrible.
26:54
She had to look terrible. And she's out here. She doesn't have any way to take care of herself.
26:59
And now after 12 years, everyone would have seen her. Everybody would have seen her on the outskirts, not in the temple.
27:05
And now she walks into the temple and she worships God. And that would have caused no small stir.
27:13
And what do you think her confession is? Her confession is Jesus Christ saved me.
27:20
So why is this here? And before we get to the most astounding, I think, part of this section, we have to look at what's gonna happen next week.
27:29
Because here we have an outcast woman who could have been angry with God, who would have seemingly had every reason to be angry with God.
27:36
We have a man who's gonna have his daughter healed because of his faith. He believes, just as Abraham did before him, that God will resurrect his daughter.
27:46
That's what he's going to believe. And then next week, Jesus is going to go home and his own family doesn't believe him.
27:54
Faith is not an inheritance. Faith is not a result of human will.
28:01
Faith is not a naturalistic belief. It's not a rational belief. It's not that we see the world out there and then decide to ourselves, oh, okay,
28:11
I guess I am gonna follow all God's commandments. That's not what happens. Faith is a gift of God.
28:17
Ephesians 2, eight and nine. Faith is a gift of God by God's grace so that no one may boast.
28:24
Because as Paul would say in 1 Corinthians, there's only one thing we boast in and that is the work of Jesus Christ.
28:31
Do you think this woman boasted in herself? Did she arrange herself? Think of the ridiculousness of what we do when we boast in ourself, in our piety, in our own faithfulness.
28:40
This woman, would she boast? Yes, I was healed because I touched Jesus' garment and look, I made a strategy and I saw him coming and I was gonna go over there and I grabbed his garment and that's why
28:52
I got healed. No, that would be insane. That would be ridiculous. What this woman's confession,
28:58
I know, was that Jesus healed me. Jesus healed me, not as a result of any human effort but as a gift of God by his grace.
29:06
And our point of application here, we are tempted to fear.
29:13
We are tempted to be afraid. We are tempted to shut up the confession that we have and we often fear sickness.
29:21
We fear miscarriage. We fear calamity. We fear our kids getting older.
29:28
We fear our kids dating. We fear them growing up and not trusting the Lord. We fear failure.
29:35
We fear getting fired from our jobs. We fear all kinds of things and I don't think that we've been put outside of the town for 12 years and so what we need to pray for is that we would have faith and we have to understand the
29:51
Hebrews tells us that we have a savior who understands our trials.
29:57
Jesus understands because he was tempted in every way that we are yet without sin. Jesus walked this earth as a man and he felt the weariness of people being around him.
30:08
He felt the weariness of going to work and being a carpenter when he didn't want to that day. It's a difficult job.
30:14
Jesus' hands would have been hard and calloused from the hand tools and the carving of the wood that he was doing as a carpenter.
30:22
That makes tough men. Jesus would get tired but at the end of the day,
30:28
Jesus had faith in his father that was unwavering and we should have that and we should pray for it and that's the only way we have it is to pray and depend on Christ to give us that.
30:39
So let's end it here. The king over death. So here's the situation. We kind of miss it because we have a cultural thing here.
30:47
As Jesus is going on the way, there's some men that come with a message and they say, your daughter's died, she's dead.
30:56
There's no point in bothering the teacher anymore. Whatever he was going to do, he can't do now, right?
31:03
Because we know this. What's the point now? Despite what Bethel says, there's not a lot of resurrection going on, okay?
31:12
Not a lot of that. But Jesus looks at him and you can't miss it. Please don't miss it.
31:17
He says, do not be afraid, only believe. This is a reversal of the rebuke against his own disciples in the boat.
31:26
Why are you so afraid, you of so little faith? You faint hearted, why do you not believe?
31:33
Here, he turns to this man whose daughter has just died and he says, do not be afraid, only believe.
31:41
I'm gonna tell you guys, if somebody told me that my daughter died, I would be more than afraid.
31:49
I would be more than afraid. It's a bad situation. But Yairus continues on with him.
31:56
I don't know what kind of hope he's holding onto, but he's still going and as they go and they come up on his house, they would see a scene because the tradition that the
32:05
Jews followed in this day would mean even if you were super poor, you had to hire a couple of flautists to play flutes and you had to have someone wailing outside of the house.
32:16
But Yairus was a man of means and so there would have been many professional mourners outside of his house and there would have been a commotion.
32:23
So as Jesus and his inner circle, James, John and Peter come up to the house, there would be commotion, wailing, flutes playing, instruments and these people are professional merchants of death.
32:35
They've seen death, this is their job. Their job is to go to houses and to mourn and so they are not gonna be fooled.
32:42
Is she really dead or mostly dead? No, she's dead, she's really dead. These people know that.
32:47
They can see that she's not breathing. They know that her heart is not beating, that her skin is growing cold to the touch and so when
32:55
Jesus says, she's not dead, she's only asleep, they're like, this guy's a madman.
33:03
What do you think you're talking about? Yeah, she's dead, she's dead. You haven't been in there, pretty sure she's dead.
33:10
That's what they're saying. So why does Jesus say this? Well, because there is going to be a distinction here and this is a good one for us.
33:19
We live in a naturalistic time. If we can't empirically prove it, then we don't believe it.
33:24
This is what gives us problems with this kind of stuff. We have a problem, Reformed people, when we hear that Spurgeon went and he prayed in many people's deathbed and they were healed and we look at that and we go, ooh boy.
33:38
I don't know about that. Science doesn't really go with us there and that's what we do.
33:46
In this situation, what Jesus is doing is he is causing a separation. He's already separated his disciples.
33:53
He's got the inner circle that are gonna go in there with him and now he makes a separation because when these people profess, they laugh at him.
34:01
They really revile him in a sense, like you're crazy. You don't know what you're talking about and so what he does is he is going to cause a separation.
34:10
No one gets to go into this room but the mother and the father and these disciples and they walk in this room.
34:18
It's hard to imagine, isn't it? It's hard to imagine the mentality of the mother and the father as they walk in this room and they see their little girl dead on the bed, cold.
34:29
All of that potential is gone. This is a young girl, young girl, whole life ahead of her, just about to become an adult in their culture.
34:42
So many hopes, so many ideas, so many plans for her future and there she lays dead and Jesus comes in and what he does is he risks ceremonial uncleanness because he touches the dead body and immediately what happens?
35:03
She's brought to life because God not only sees all time at the same time,
35:11
God has complete power over death. Do you understand how we started? We started with God forming out of dust like a potter shapes the clay.
35:25
He made a man out of dust and he breathed life into him and Adam breathed and he made woman by taking a rib.
35:34
Would you think that you would create life out of a rib? No, I think I would pick a more vital organ if I was gonna do something there, right?
35:40
Science would say that we need to work on those internal organs and maybe the last frontier of the brain.
35:46
God says, no, rib, it'll be a rib, okay? Just bone and some muscle and he forms a beautiful woman and he puts life in her and so when
35:58
God sees, when the God of glory sees this girl on the bed, dead, he's angered at the human condition,
36:06
I think because he came to reverse death because it was never supposed to be that way. Adam and Eve were not supposed to die.
36:13
We were supposed to be with God forever, worshiping in him and conversing with him, communicating with him.
36:20
We were made to glorify him. We were made to profess with our lips that he is God and so Jesus sees this little girl and he touches her and immediately, she raises up and he orders some food for her.
36:36
That should recall something for us too. Then when Jesus is seen on the banks of the lake and his disciples are there and they're fishing and they come to the shore and he says for them to cook some fish because to eat is to be alive.
36:52
As a animal scientist and a person who's taught animal science for a long time and I've frustrated my wife with this before,
36:58
I've always said if they're eating, they're good. If they're eating, they're good. If you're not eating, there's something wrong.
37:06
And so this girl is as good as new, better than new. She has been raised from the dead.
37:11
They are all completely astounded, astounded. Do you think
37:17
Yairus believed in the power of Jesus Christ after this? He's there because he believed.
37:23
He's there because he was following and that day, his faith was turned to sight, right?
37:31
He saw Jesus conquer death for his little girl. Amazing thing, amazing thing.
37:37
So a couple of curiosities before we tie it up. One of the curiosities is Jesus once again tells everybody, don't tell anybody, right?
37:46
Don't tell anybody. Now, here's the obvious problem with this, okay?
37:53
The house is surrounded by mourners who are wailing. Everyone's seeing this.
37:59
Everyone knows that the girl was dead and at some point, this girl is going to come out of the house, right?
38:05
So is it gonna matter if they tell anybody? No, okay? What happened in there?
38:11
That's gonna be the question. Wow, okay, so the teacher went in and now this girl who was dead is alive.
38:17
I think that that's gonna cause commotion, okay? But I think pragmatically what's going on is that Jesus is going to travel and he wants to make his way back somewhere else because he's gonna go home and that's where we're gonna see him next week as he goes home to his hometown and it would have been very difficult to do if he had just publicly resurrected this girl and she walks out the front door with him.
38:37
Can you imagine what would have happened? Yeah, you think there were crowds before? Wait till now.
38:43
You wouldn't even be able to move. So I think that's what's going on. I think there's a little bit of time that's being bought for him to get back.
38:50
So what do we do with all this? By way of application, I wanna leave us with something and I wanna leave us with something very simple.
38:58
I read out of Ecclesiastes, I think last week, maybe a couple weeks ago, here's the simple thing to leave you with,
39:05
Christian. God is in control of every single thing in your life. The thing that we see is so big to us and it always is and I know that.
39:17
It's the difficult counseling situation. It's when somebody, it's when your friend is grieving or you're grieving and something is so bad and it seems like, what do
39:27
I even say here? Have you been in that boat? Or something so terrible has happened to someone and they call you and they're in grief and you don't know what to say.
39:34
And sometimes it can sound trite to us to say, trust the Lord, trust the Lord.
39:40
But here's what I see in this passage. I wanna take this passage and I want us to think, there is real help in times of grief, both for ourselves but also for our friends and our family.
39:55
If you can't diagnose the illness, if the sickness just won't go away, if someone's lost a family member, if it's turmoil and persecution, whatever it is, whatever it is, we have to remember, not in a pietistic way, in a very real way, we have to remember that God is allowing it to happen, that it's not outside of his control and that what's happening for you,
40:21
Christian, what's happening for you, is that he is perfecting his work in you, even as we speak.
40:29
In the good times and the bad times, God has began a work in you and he will complete it because what's happening in this present moment is nothing compared to future glory.
40:41
And so what he is preparing us for, God always plays the long game with his people. He is preparing us to be the greatest worshipers of him that we can be.
40:51
That is our eternal destiny. Our eternal destiny is to work without toil. Our eternal destiny is to worship without distraction.
40:58
It's to pray with complete dependence. It's to go forth and do not sin. It's to have perfectly consummated his instruction to the woman caught in sin, right?
41:09
To go and sin no more. Did you know that someday we will? We will go and we will sin no more.
41:14
And there will be no death and there will be no sickness and there will be no uncleanness. And this is the last thing.
41:20
We know this is true because Jesus comes into a system that would have told him, you just touched this woman, you have to go clean yourself before you can go back into the temple.
41:30
But you know what? With Jesus Christ, no matter what it is in your way, if it's death, if it's grief, if it's sin, if it's rebellion, no matter what it is, the cleanness only goes one direction with Jesus.
41:42
Did you understand that? Anything he touches becomes clean, not the other way around.
41:47
For us, when we touch things, we get defiled. He would say it ourselves, that we are defiled by our lustful desires, right?
41:55
When they give birth to sin and that brings death. But with Jesus, he doesn't have those desires.
42:00
And so anything he touches is made ceremonially clean and immediately ready to go back into the presence of God.
42:07
That's what he did here. That girl, she's ready to go into the temple immediately.
42:12
She's clean. She was a dead body. To touch that is to be defiled. But Jesus touches her and she goes into the temple and Jesus is the
42:20
Lord of the temple. So you, you who fear death, you who fear slavery to sin, you who fear losing your livelihood, understand this.
42:30
God has elected, foreknown, and touched. And when he touched us, when he grabbed our hearts, we became completely clean immediately.
42:40
Immediately. What sin weighs you down, Christian? What fear saps away your courage for this
42:48
God? The answer would be, according to this passage, there is no rational fear that should do that.
42:56
He has conquered death. He has conquered defilement. He has conquered uncleanness.
43:02
He has conquered sickness, Satan, nature, everything. He owns it all so we can go with courage.
43:09
Let's pray. Lord, thank you so much for the message. Thank you for the instruction of this healing, the things that are so impossible for us, things that we can't imagine.
43:23
They are easy for you. Lord, it was not days of struggle to save this woman.
43:32
Lord, she touched your cloak and she was saved. Lord, it wasn't a huge religious seance or outward experiment that saved
43:44
Yairus' daughter. Lord, you touched her and she was saved. And Lord, so it is with us that we rebelled against you, that we were lost, that we were seeking out the destructive ends of our own flesh.
43:58
And Lord, you gave us a new heart. And out of that new heart, we became no longer totally depraved, but we became sons and daughters of God.
44:08
And you have cleaned us. And Lord, even though we struggle with the flesh, as the natural man rages today,
44:14
Lord, you have given us power over sin. Help us to believe it. Lord, I know that often we don't believe and that our circumstances seem bigger.
44:22
But Lord, we know that you are bigger than all of those things. And without faith, it is impossible to be saved. So Lord, grant us faith.
44:30
Grant us faith and let us not take credit for it, but instead give all glory to you, the giver of these gifts.
44:36
What a wonderful gift faith is. And Lord, out of that faith, may we love you.
44:42
May we love you with our whole hearts. And out of that overflow of love for you, that we would love our neighbor as ourself.
44:49
That we would keep the whole law because of your righteousness and because of your power. Grant that to us,