What is He Really Like?

Kongsvinger Lutheran Church

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

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

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And now here's a message from Pastor Chris Roseberg. The Holy Gospel according to St.

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Mark chapter 5 verses 21 through 43. When Jesus has crossed again in the boat to the other side, a great crowd gathered about him.

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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,

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

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And he went with him. And a great crowd followed him and thronged about him.

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And there was a woman who had a discharge of blood for 12 years who had suffered much under many physicians and had spent all that she had.

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And there was no and was no better but rather grew worse. She had heard the reports about Jesus that came and came up behind him in the crowd and touched his garment.

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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.

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

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Who touched my garments? And his disciples said to him, You see the crowd pressing around you and yet you say who touched me?

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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.

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And he said to her, Daughter, your faith has made you well. Go in peace.

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Be healed of your disease. And while he was still speaking there came from the ruler's house some who said,

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Your daughter is dead. Why trouble the teacher any further? But overhearing what they said,

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Jesus said to the ruler of the synagogue, Do not fear, only believe. And he allowed no one to follow him except for Peter and James and John, the brother of James.

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They came to the house of the ruler of the synagogue and Jesus saw a commotion, people weeping and wailing loudly.

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

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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.

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Taking her by the hand, he said to her, Talitha kumi, which means little girl, I say to you arise.

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

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

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This is the gospel of the Lord. In the name of Jesus, I must confess this is literally, if not the favorite text in all of scripture, my favorite.

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It's very close to the top. Think of it this way. Have any of you ever met a celebrity?

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Now my parents tell a story that when I was a wee little lad, that I was at LAX waiting for my grandparents to get off of a flight from New York.

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They were coming to visit. And of course I don't remember any of this. And apparently Wilt Chamberlain was in LAX.

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And I as this little tyke said, Look dad, it's a giant.

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And the way that my dad tells the story, Wilt Chamberlain picked me up and let me see what it was like to see the world from like 900 feet in the air.

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And so you think of stories like this. So we know people who've met celebrities or famous athletes.

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And oftentimes if they've had the opportunity to meet them, the question that comes to our mind is this.

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What's that person really like? What are they really like? Are they like the way they come across on television or in the news or are they totally different?

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And so this is a text that tells us what Jesus is really like.

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And I think this is important because when we consider what Jesus says in John chapter 15 verse 12, you know, on the night that he's betrayed,

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Jesus leaves us with a final commandment. He says, This is my commandment, that you love one another.

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And here's the caveat. As I have loved you.

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As I have loved you. And we read that and we think of Jesus's death.

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We think of his sacrificial death on the cross. And truly God demonstrates his love for us in that while we were yet sinners,

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Christ died for our sins. However, for the disciples hearing it that Monday, Thursday, they had an entire body of experiences, years with Christ traipsing about the

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Galilean wilderness. Heading back and forth between Capernaum and Jerusalem and crossing the

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Sea of Galilee. And so for them, they had seen what Jesus is really like.

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And he they could say, we know what he means by this, that we love one another as Christ has loved them, as Christ has loved you.

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And over and again, I'm struck by how poorly we Christians treat each other. It's terrible.

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Myself included. We slander and backbite. We argue and we fight.

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We're a cranky and cantankerous bunch. And all of this is because of our sin.

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And when we do these things, we behave like the devil, not Jesus. And so as we read this story, again, one of my favorites, let us consider what

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Jesus is really like. It is so utterly amazing.

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And as I am want to do when I teach this text and preach this text, I'm going to preach from my translation.

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The reason being is, is that when you read this in the Greek, the vividness of this account really comes roaring out.

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And there's no real way to pull it into polished English. And some of the idioms are unbelievable.

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And so I want you to hear it as close to the original as possible, knowing that we will not quite get there.

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But here's what it says in Mark chapter five. Jesus passing through the sea in the boat to the other side, there was a large crowd gathered around him and he was by the sea.

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And if you're reading this in Greek, you're immediately struck by the fact that all of the verbs are in the present tense.

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And we know from church history that the gospel of Mark reflects the preaching notes of none other than Peter himself.

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And there's something to this. The person who first spoke these words, if Mark wrote them down, if they came from Peter, literally was reflecting on the memory of this as if it were happening before their eyes in the present tense.

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He's seeing this in the now, not in the then. It's very, very stark in the

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Greek. And so here's what it says. The ruler of the synagogue, whose name was Jarius, comes seeing him, falls at his feet, all present tense.

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Consider the magnitude of what's happening here. The ruler of the synagogue, this is the guy who's in charge of the synagogue.

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And you and I know, because I've just read this gospel text out, what's going on.

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His daughter is at the point of death. And so you can literally kind of piece together at least a little bit of what's going on.

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Jesus had been on the other side of the Sea of Galilee. Prior to this, in the context, he had just exercised the demoniac of the

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Gerasenes, cast out the legion of demons, thrown them into these pigs, and they went hurtling over a cliff into the sea and drowned.

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Jesus then, coming back, is immediately met by a crowd. He's also met by Jarius, which means this guy was keeping vigilant watch.

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His little girl was deathly ill. And this is in the days before hospitals.

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This is in the days before antibiotics. This is in the days before triaminic and Pepto -Bismol and Advil and all these things that we just take for granted.

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So if you got sick back then, there was a good chance you were gonna die. And very many children didn't make it to adulthood.

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Child mortality in this time was huge. And so you kind of think about this.

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All of us who are parents know what this is like. We have a child who gets sick, is running a fever, isn't doing well.

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And what happens when this happens? They're throwing up. We're not sleeping.

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We're taking turns keeping vigil by their bed, taking the washcloth, putting cool water on it, putting it back on their forehead, taking their temperature, seeing if they're still breathing, if they're okay.

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This little girl had gone through all of that and was getting worse. And it was clear that her life was ebbing away.

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And Jairus is beside himself. He wants to save his little girl.

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And Jesus isn't there. And he knows that Jesus can heal her. Have you seen Jesus?

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Is he back yet? I know he went across the Sea of Galilee. Has he come back yet? Has anyone seen

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Jesus? And Jesus is at the dock. They had just tied the boat up. And Jairus, at this point, is hightailing it, hoofing it, getting it there as fast as he can.

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And he doesn't have time for words or to beg. And so he humbles himself to the nth degree, throws himself on his face at Jesus' feet.

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He urged him greatly, saying, my Thugaterion, my little girl, my little daughter, she's dying.

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Come that you might lay hands on her in order to, and here's the Greek verb, in order to save her.

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Now we know in the context we're talking about a physical healing, but the verb is save.

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That's the verb. Why they changed it to heal, I don't get it. It's more powerful.

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Leave it where it's at. There's a little bit of wordplay going on here. In order that you might save her so that she might live.

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You see, when you hear these words, you realize, man, I need to be saved too so that I might live.

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My children need to be saved too so that they might live. This is not about illness. This is about something else.

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And in the present tense, he departs with him. Jesus immediately leaves with him. He's, no words, just, all right, let's go.

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And the crowd's thinking, wow, Jesus is going to heal this little girl. Let's go see this. And so a great crowd followed him and they crowded him.

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So Jesus is in the middle of this huddle, this group of people heading up the hill in Capernaum up to the house of Jairus.

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And then out of nowhere, the text says, a woman having a flow of blood, present tense, for 12 years.

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That's verse 25. And consider the magnitude of what's going on here. When you read the

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Mosaic covenant and all of the stipulations regarding what makes you clean or unclean. This is a woman who, according to God's law, has been unclean for 12 years.

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The entire time that this little girl who's dying has been alive, the entire, her entire lifetime, this woman has been dying a little bit every day.

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She has been unclean, kept from the worship community, not able to attend church, not able to touch anyone, lest she make them unclean.

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You go through this for 12 years. And what do you think God thinks about you? You begin to think

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God must truly hate me, that God is mad at me, that I have done something to upset him.

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He's turned his face from me. He's abandoned me. He's left me. I can't even go to church and hear his word.

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And if this is what you think God thinks of you, it's right to think about this in light of our sin.

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But what this woman needs is mercy. She needs grace. She needs an absolution. And so it says then she suffered greatly.

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She had done everything humanly possible in her time. She had suffered greatly by many doctors, had spent all that she had to no avail.

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Every spare penny she could come up with and save, she would then give it to a doctor who would say, this will make you better.

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And every single treatment made her worse.

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This is a 12 year long nightmare that she could not wake up from.

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And it touches on how she feels God feels about her.

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The text says she had heard of Jesus. She had heard of him. A little bit of history to note here.

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Jesus is a Torah observant Jew and thank God he is. Jesus kept

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God's law perfectly for us. Because if he had not, we would have no hope of salvation.

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In order to be the spotless lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, Jesus must keep

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God's laws all the way down to the nano law perfectly. And in the book of Numbers, we learn that Jewish Hebrew males are required by the law to have certain things on their clothes.

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Now shirts weren't bought at Walmart. They didn't wear t -shirts. Jesus never wore a graphic tee or anything like that that said,

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Mary's my homegirl or anything like that. Jesus had a shirt and it was more like a poncho kind of sewed up on the sides, but it had corners.

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And on each of the corners, there was something coming off of it like a leather shoelaces.

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These are kind of like shoelaces. They can be about this long or whatever, but they're about the size of a shoelace in width coming off of the corners of the shirt required by the law.

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They are called tzitzioth, the plural form of tzitzit.

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And this is what this woman is going to be touching. Why? She's trying to figure out how to touch him without touching him.

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She's trying to obey the law, at least the letter of it, while still figuring out how to kind of break the spirit of it.

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Because she doesn't want to make Jesus unclean. He is this holy rabbi and she's heard that he can heal and she's desperate.

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And so she's concocted this plan. She heard of Jesus coming behind him in the crowd.

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And you can almost see that in order to pull this off, she may have even had to put like a hood over her head, some kind of covering so that she's not recognized because everybody in town and Capernaum, small place at this time, small town, everyone in Capernaum would have known who she was.

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So she's got this scheme. She's going to just sneak up and she touched his tzitzioth.

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For she had said, and listen to the words, if only I might touch his garment,

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I will be saved. That's the verb.

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If I touch his garment, I will be saved. And immediately, immediately on the spot, the woman's flow of blood dried up and she knew she was, and listen to these words.

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It's fabulous. Saved from the scourge.

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Mastigas. Horrible word. When Jesus was scourged, he was mastigas.

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He was scourged. And so we learn from this idiom, this wonderful way of putting it, what she had suffered to her was like a daily whipping.

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It was a scourge. And you have to wonder, did she think it was God who was the one who was whipping her?

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And so she touches Jesus's garment and she is saved from the whip. She's saved from the scourged.

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And then everything comes on apart. And Jesus immediately knew in himself, power had gone out of him and turning around in the crowd, he said, who touched my garment?

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So there's Jesus. He's walking the crowd all around him. She comes up, sneaks his touches, touches the tzitzioth.

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She's now healed and she knows it. Jesus all of a sudden stops. Who touched me?

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Who touched me? And what do you think this woman is thinking now?

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Oh boy, she's gonna get it.

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In the corporate world, when your performance is not up to snuff, in the corporate world, when you're having a difficult time playing well with others, obeying the rules, doing what is necessary.

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Maybe you're taking lunches that are too long. Maybe you're stealing paperclips. Maybe you're not getting along with your fellow coworkers.

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You're going to have that talk. That talk is the talk that you have when your boss calls you into his office and sits you down.

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You know what they call that talk? It's called the come to Jesus meeting, which is a terrible name for it if you think about it, because this woman is having the first ever come to Jesus meeting.

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And watch how it goes. She doesn't get fired. It's wonderful.

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So who touched my garment? And the disciple said to him, okay,

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Jesus, okay, look, there's a whole crowd. Everyone's touching you. How can you say who touched me?

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And Jesus looked around to see who had done it. It's like he totally ignored his disciples. It's like,

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I don't have time to explain this to you. Somebody touched me. And then the woman, and watch what happens here, fearing and trembling.

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You see, this is what she's expect. 12 years of being forbidden from hearing God's word. 12 years of not being able to touch anybody.

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12 years of spending every dime that she had. 12 years of thinking God hates her.

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Now Jesus has turned around and said, who's touched me? And she knows the gig is up.

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It's all over. She's going to be held up for ridicule and rebuke, castigated, probably stoned to death at this point.

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And so she's fearing and trembling. She is so afraid she can't even control her muscles.

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And when you're this afraid, there's usually tears.

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And when you're this afraid and there's tears, there's probably mucus. It's a mess.

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And she knew what had happened to her. And she came and she falls before Jesus. And the text says she told him the whole truth.

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This is a confession. She told him the whole truth. And there it is.

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Jesus, I've had a flow of blood for 12 years. I've spent everything I had. God must hate me.

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You must hate me. I'm sorry I touched her since she was healed. I heard that you can heal.

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I didn't want to make you unclean. And she's telling him all of the details. First word out of Jesus's mouth.

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He says it all. Daughter. Daughter.

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You remember Jairus said, my little girl, my thugateria, she's dying. Jesus says to this woman, you're my thugateria, my little girl.

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Daughter, your faith has saved you. That's what the text says.

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Shalom. Go in peace and be healed from your scourge.

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Nobody saw this coming. This woman didn't see it coming. She didn't see it coming anywhere.

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She expected nothing but hell. And instead, she was embraced by Jesus and treated as if he was

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Jesus's very own little girl. This is what

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Jesus is like. And it pains me that I am not.

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Daughter, your faith has saved you. Go in peace. Be healthy from your scourge.

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And while he was still speaking, and now he comes back to the rest of the story. We've got to come back to reality here.

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We've got to remember, we were heading to Jairus's house to save his little girl who was literally at the point of death.

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And he gets a report that none of us ever wants to get. While he was still speaking, those from the synagogue ruler came saying, and here's the word again, your daughter.

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Your daughter has died. Why still trouble the teacher?

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I can't imagine anybody telling me these words. I can't imagine what it must be like to hear somebody speak these words to you as a parent.

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I'm sorry we did everything we could. Your daughter's dead.

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In that moment, it has to be like being punched in the face. In the moment, it has to feel like God has abandoned you.

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You, at this point, begin to question, what if I had just left two minutes earlier?

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What if this woman had not stopped Jesus? Would he have been able to get there in time? What if, what if, what if?

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But listen to the text, verse 36. Jesus refused. Literally, it's that strong. He refused to listen to the word.

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It's like the person saying, your daughter has died. And Jesus is saying, I don't want to hear any of that. Put that away.

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Stop saying that. But it's true. I'm not going to hear any of it.

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So he wouldn't, he refused to listen. And he said to the synagogue ruler, and you can almost see him right in Jarius's face.

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Kind of one of those close, Jesus taking him by the shoulder, looking him in the face and saying to Jarius, do not be afraid.

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Just believe. Do not be afraid. Just believe.

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And brothers and sisters, when it comes to our relationship with God, fear of God is a result of our own sin.

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We fear God's judgment. We fear his wrath, and rightly so. And Jesus, because we know that we are saved by grace through faith,

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Jesus says to us, do not fear God. Not in that sense. Just believe.

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Trust me. I'm going to pull you through your own death as well.

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So at this point, Jesus wouldn't permit anybody to accompany him, except for Peter, James, and John.

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Two witnesses are necessary to establish a fact according to the Mosaic covenant. Jesus took two plus one.

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A little extra measure. And then, so they come to the house of the synagogue ruler, and Jesus observes the tumult and the weeping and the wailing.

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A little bit of a note here. Ancient Israel was one of these cultures that practiced something I don't get.

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They had professional mourners. It doesn't make any sense to me, but it is true.

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Okay? Haiti is still a country that practices this. I've actually seen documentaries that kind of depict this.

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And like, the better you are at like the physicality of your travail and wailing, the more money you make as a mourner.

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So it's like, what do you do for a living? Oh yeah, I'm a mourner. Really? That sounds like a great career. But so there was professional mourners, and the fact that the synagogue ruler has these at his house tells us that he's probably a guy of means.

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He has a little bit of money. So they walk in. Important to note this. Despite the fact that there are professional mourners there, do you think for a second that Jarius's wife is putting on a show?

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Her tumult. Her weeping. She's sitting in the midst of all of this, probably thinking, how am

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I going to take my next breath without my little girl? How am I supposed to get on with life?

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Entering. Present tense. Again, it's so vivid. It's like as if the person who wrote this down could see this all happening.

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And he's writing it as if it's happening in that very moment. Entering. Jesus says, why are you in tumult and weeping?

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The child is not dead, but is asleep. And so they laughed at him. And then the

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Greek verb is really strong. He threw them out. It's like he physically went and grabbed these mourners. Get out of here.

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You get up like this. So he literally throws them all out.

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Physically throws them all out. And then in this wonderful tender moment, he takes the father of the child and the mother with him.

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It's as if he walks right up to Jairus and Jairus' wife. And he says, he grabs their hands and says, come with me.

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Come with me. It's going to be all right. The kindness, the humanity here is so beautiful.

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And they enter where the child was. And so now that means that they had to open a door.

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And Jairus is for the first time seeing the corpse of his daughter. And the whole time

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Jesus has got his hand. And so he then takes the hand of the child, turns around and he says to her tender words,

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Talitha, Kumi, little girl, get up. And immediately, immediately, the little girl got up and not only did she get up, it's not like she just woke up in bed and just kind of sat there and went, wow, what's going on?

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She got up and stood up and started walking. And we learned that she's 12 years old and they were amazed immediately with a great amazement.

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What just happened? That just happened. What is going on here?

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They're amazed with a great amazement. And so Jesus commanded them strongly. No one is to know this.

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You just keep this to yourself. This is for you. And then he said, I mean, this last part, it just screams that this is totally history.

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He said, give her something to eat. It's beautiful.

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Jesus knows this little girl has been throwing up, has been running a fever, has literally been through the ringer and died.

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She woke up on an empty stomach, first order of business. She needs something to eat.

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Would you get her some toast? Maybe a little orange juice too. Brothers and sisters, this is what

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Jesus is like. This commandment, I leave you that you love one another as I have loved you.

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Love is the law. And when we realize that Jesus is the standard, we must come to grips with this.

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We have not loved each other in this way. We haven't. I don't even know if I know what it means to love each other this way.

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And so this calls us to repent. This calls us to reflect. We call ourselves

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Christians. And yet, Scripture talks about those who backbite, devour each other, are unkind, prone to fits of anger and rage and selfishly looking after themselves rather than each other.

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That they're worldly. And Jesus wasn't like that at all. He isn't like that at all.

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And see, he demonstrates his love for us when we are at our worst by bleeding and dying for our sins, something we did not deserve.

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He tenderly cares for us. In the waters of our baptism, he called each and every one of us out of the grave.

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He said to the little girls at the baptismal font, Talitha Kume, little girl,

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I tell you, arise. And he washed away their sins. The little boys, he said, we lost my little sons.

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Arise. He washed away their sins, filled them with the

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Holy Spirit, circumcised their hearts, made them right before God.

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Today, Jesus comes to us and we're not going to touch his sits the oath.

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He's going to touch our lips with his body and his blood. Broken and shed for us for the forgiveness of our sins.

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Today, we heard Jesus's kind words to each and every one of us. I forgive you all of your sins.

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How is it that we hear these words and we do these things and we reflect on these truths and still we harbor bitterness and unforgiveness towards each other?

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Something seriously wrong with us. We need to repent.

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We need to see this for what it is. Selfish, satanic wickedness, and then trust confidently in the love of this

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Jesus who forgives and seeks out those who are dead and makes them alive.

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The one who, when somebody comes to him, he doesn't cast them out. The one who would never snuff out a smoldering wick.

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Who comes to us and doesn't give us judgment and wrath. That speaks tenderly to us as sons and daughters because that's what we are in him.

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When we pray, forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.

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Now, it begins to make sense. It comes into light. How could we not forgive when he is so insanely forgiving that he would take a wretch like me, like you, and make us his treasure and speak tenderly and kindly to us.

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This is what he is really like. The steadfast love of the

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

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They are new every morning. Great is your faithfulness, O Lord. Great is your faithfulness.

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And so, brothers and sisters, forgiven in love by Christ, sons and daughters adopted into his family, forgiven and free and pardoned, let us embrace and hold confidently to this great love of Christ, this mercy of Jesus, this pardon and peace, and let us bear fruit in keeping with repentance and demonstrating that love to others.

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But let us also take confidence in this, that on that great day that we confess that Jesus is coming again to judge the living and the dead, on that great day when

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Jesus appears, we will not shrink back in fear, but like little children run to see him.

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And just like this little girl, on the day that she was raised from the grave, Jesus insisted that she be given something to eat.

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On that same day, when you wake up from the grave, you will wake up on a hungry stomach.

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First order of business is Jesus himself will feed you at the great wedding feast of the

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Lamb. It's beautiful when you think about it. We don't deserve any of it.

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But that's how awesome he is. That's what he's really like.

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In the name of Jesus. Amen. If you would like to support the teaching ministry of Kungsvinger Lutheran Church, you can do so by sending a tax -free donation to Kungsvinger Lutheran Church, 15950 470th

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Avenue, NW, Oslo, MN 56744. And again, that address is

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Kungsvinger Lutheran Church, 15950 470th

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Avenue, NW, Oslo, MN 56744. We thank you for your support.

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