Do Not Fear, Only Believe

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

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

And now, here's a message from Pastor Chris Roseberg. The Holy Gospel according to St. Mark, Chapter 5, verses 21 through 43.

When Jesus had again crossed over by boat to the other side of the lake, a large crowd gathered around him while he was by the lake.

Then one of the synagogue rulers named Jairus came there. Seeing Jesus, he fell at his feet and pleaded earnestly with him,

My little daughter is dying. Please come and put your hands on her so that she will be healed and live.

So Jesus went with him. A large crowd followed and pressed around him, and a woman was there who had been subject to bleeding for 12 years.

She had suffered a great deal under the care of many doctors and had spent all that she had. Yet instead of getting better, she grew worse.

When she heard about Jesus, she came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak because she thought,

If I just touch his clothes, I will be healed. Immediately her bleeding stopped and she felt in her body that she was freed from her suffering.

At once Jesus realized that power had gone out from him, and he turned around in the crowd and asked,

Who touched my clothes? You see the people crowding against you, his disciples answered, and yet you can ask,

Who touched me? But Jesus kept looking around to see who had done it.

Then the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came and fell at his feet, trembling with fear. Told him the whole truth, and he said to her,

Daughter, your faith has healed you. Go in peace and be freed from your suffering. While Jesus was still speaking, some men came from the house of Jairus, the synagogue ruler.

Your daughter is dead, they said. Why bother the teacher anymore? Ignoring what they said,

Jesus told the synagogue ruler, Don't be afraid. Just believe. He did not let anyone follow him except for Peter, James, and John, the brothers of James.

When they came to the home of the synagogue ruler, Jesus saw a commotion with people crying and wailing loudly.

He went in and said to them, Why all this commotion and wailing? The child is not dead, but asleep.

But they laughed at him, and after he put them all out, he took the child's father and mother and the disciples who were with him and went in where the child was, and he took her by the hand and said to her,

Talitha kum, which means little girl, I say to you, get up. And immediately the girl stood up and walked around, and she was twelve years old.

And at this they were completely astonished, and he gave strict orders not to let anyone know about this.

And he told them to give her something to eat. In the name of Jesus.

Every good story has a backstory. This one has a backstory, and I'd like to kind of fill in some of the missing data so you get what's going on.

I want you to think of this story kind of as you would one of the scenes from The Wizard of Oz.

Remember The Wizard of Oz? Well Dorothy was captured by the witch, and of course the witch had this ginormous hourglass with a red sand in it, and she flipped it over.

Of course I'd always thought, why don't you just turn the hourglass over and you'd save yourself, Dorothy.

But apparently that idea never came to Dorothy's mind. But in this story,

I want you to think that there's an hourglass, and it's actually a very serious one, because as soon as the sand runs out, a 12 -year -old girl is going to die.

That's just how this goes. And so the backstory, if you remember last week, we talked about the fact that Jesus had spent so much time ministering to people and healing people that he was literally exhausted.

And they got into a boat to go across the Sea of Galilee, and that's where Jesus fell asleep on the cushion, and the storm came up, and they woke him up, don't you care that we're perishing, right?

Well, when they got to the other side, that's the story recounted in the earlier part of chapter 5, about Jesus healing that poor demoniac, a man possessed by demons to the point where the name of the demon was

Legion, and I mean, literally this guy was cutting himself, living in tombs, he was stark naked, just completely demonized, and Jesus frees him.

Well, while all of that is going on, there's another story going on, and the story begins in the home of Jairus, the synagogue ruler of Capernaum.

And the story kind of goes like this, the 12 -year -old daughter comes into the house and says,

Mom, I don't feel good. She doesn't feel good at all. And she begins throwing up and running a fever, and she's getting sicker and sicker, she can't keep anything down.

This is the days before they have urgent care or emergency rooms or penicillin, and so the only thing you can do with this kind of illness is kind of ride it out.

And they're taking rags, putting them in water, putting them on her head, doing anything to cool her down.

We don't know what she suffered from, but based upon what Jesus says at the end, clearly she was so sick she couldn't even keep water down.

And while all of this is going on, you can imagine as parents how you have to feel.

We've all had sick kids, you know, where we've had to stand guard at night and be at their bedside and forego sleep so that we can keep guard over them to make sure they're okay.

This is what's going on in the home of Jairus, and despite the diligence of Jairus and his wife, their daughter is getting worse.

I apologize, I will not be able to tell this story without getting choked up, because it just kills me.

So while Jesus is gone, Jairus is going around town. Have you seen

Jesus? Is he here? And he's not. He's not there. I saw him get in a boat.

He went across the lake. And so you can tell he's looking for Jesus, and that comes up very clearly in the text, and I'll show it to you.

And if it's okay with you, I'd like to preach this text from my translation, because there's certain things going on in the

Greek that just get lost in translation, and I want to paint in some of the missing color.

So we pick up at Mark chapter 5, verse 21. After they had healed the demoniac,

Jesus left the Decapolis area and kind of commissioned that now -freed demoniac to go tell everyone what he had done for him.

So they get back into the boat, and passing through the sea in the boat to the other side, they come back, and a large crowd gathered around him, and he was by the sea.

So Jesus literally, as soon as the people of Capernaum recognize that it's Jesus, they literally form a crowd right there at the dock, if you would.

No sooner does the boat land, the people want to come and say their things to Jesus. And it says this, and the ruler of the synagogue, whose name was

Jairus, comes, and seeing him falls at his feet. So Jairus got word, Jesus is back, he's back, he can help your daughter.

And so he immediately gets out of the house and hightails it to the shore and finds

Jesus in the crowd. And what's fascinating is that Jesus isn't cruel, he isn't mean, and he cares about this specific individual favor, if you would, asked of this man.

And here's what it says, Jairus urged Jesus greatly, you can just hear the pleading, my little daughter, my little girl, she's dying, she's dying, come so that you can lay your hands on her in order to save her, that she might live.

And the Greek word there is save, it is save. Come so that you might save her, so that she might live.

And he departs with him, and a great crowd followed him, and they crowded him.

I mean, Jesus immediately says, alright, I'm with you, let's go, lead the way. Think of Jairus' pleading with Jesus, and he's on his face as a prayer, because that's what it is.

Who is he beseeching for help? The Lord, God. From where does our help come from?

From the Lord. So Jesus departs, great crowd followed, everyone's going, wow, we gotta go see this, it's gonna be a miracle, right?

There's a little girl who's dying that Jesus is gonna save. Now remember the hourglass, the sands are getting desperately low.

And then it says this, and a woman having a flow of blood for twelve years, and suffered greatly by many doctors, and had spent all that she had to no avail, but rather had gotten worse.

Now, let me fill in some of the missing data here. This is important information, because this woman, according to the

Mosaic Covenant, has been unclean for twelve years.

And unclean is a big deal. She's not able to go to synagogue, she's not able to go to church.

In fact, what we know about the Pharisees' teaching in Judea at this time, she would have been considered somebody who was cursed of God.

Leviticus chapter 15, 25 through 27 says this, when a woman has a discharge of blood for many days at a time other than her monthly period, or has a discharge that continues beyond her period, she will be unclean as long as she has the discharge.

That means she has to be separated from the community. The law has literally picked her out and said, not you.

You are sinful. You are unclean. You are to be separated from the community.

Listen to this, any bed she lies on while her discharge continues will be unclean, as is her bed during her monthly period.

Anything she sits on will be unclean, as during her period. Whoever touches them will be unclean.

He must wash his clothes and bathe with water, and he will be unclean until evening. She can't even touch anybody without making them unclean.

What a desperate situation she has found herself in. Twelve years she has been unclean, and there isn't a single good gynecologist in Judea at this time, and that's what she needs.

She's probably got a tear in her uterus or something like that. And so it says she suffered greatly by many doctors, which means she spent every penny she could save to desperately find a cure so that she would no longer be considered unclean, so that she could finally be restored to fellowship, to go to church, to be able to touch people without making them unclean.

She may as well have been a leper. But to no avail, the text says.

She had not gotten better, instead she had only gotten worse.

Twelve years she pleads with God, twelve years she does everything she can to no avail and it only gets worse.

When you experience that kind of suffering, a suffering that has with it a religious component, and by the way,

God's law is good. God's law is designed to show us all that we are all sinners.

And here it's found somebody and so poignantly and so strongly and so unrelentingly has said you are unclean, you are a sinner.

That's what the law does. And by the way, Jarius would have known who this woman is.

As the synagogue ruler, he would have been part of the people responsible for making sure she was kept out of the synagogue.

What a mess. So there's Jarius, he is running out of time, running out of time.

His daughter is about to die. And this woman sneaks into the crowd.

Here's what it says, she had heard of Jesus and coming behind him in the crowd, she touched his garment.

Other passages say that if only I touch the tassels of his garment, right? If you look in your bulletin, there's an illustration.

There's a first century Jewish man's shirt. You notice that they didn't go to Walmart and buy t -shirts and things like that.

This is basically put on a loom and made this way. But every Jewish man was required on their garments to have these things, these tassels coming off their shirts, and they are called tzitzit.

The plural is tzitzioth. And we find this command for all Jewish men to wear these things, found in Numbers chapter 15, where it says, verse 38,

Speak to the children of Israel, say to them, they shall make themselves fringes on the corners of their garments throughout their generation, and they shall put on the corner fringe a blue tekhalet, that is a thread.

And wearing the tzitzit is also commanded in Deuteronomy 22, verse 12. Now we seem to oftentimes forget that Jesus was

Jewish. So this all plays into this. When we do the cross -reference work, what we know is that she had concocted a plan.

She had heard about Jesus, heard about His miracles, and thought, I don't want to make Him unclean, so I'm going to sneak in and I'm just going to touch the end of one of those tzitzit.

That's all I've got to do. That's what she did. She said, if only

I might touch His tzitzit, I will be saved. That's what the

Greek says, I will be saved. It says, autu sosthesamai,

I will be saved. So, she had come up with the perfect plan. No need to get

Jesus unclean, just touch the tzitziot, just sneak in, get the healing, and I'm good, right?

So immediately, the woman's flow of blood dried up, and she knew she was, now here's the important words, listen to this.

She knew that she was tosomatai hati iatai apas tes mastigas.

She was saved from the scourge. I know that doesn't come through in your translation, but I want you to hear this again.

She knew that she was saved from the scourge. Your translation says maybe saved from her suffering or things like that, right?

But the idiom is saved from the scourge, and the Greek word mastigas, that is the same word used when

Jesus was scourged by the Roman soldiers. He was mastigas. He experienced a mastigas.

And so, what this woman suffered for 12 years, in her own heart, she describes it as a scourging.

It tells you about the suffering that she went through. So there she is.

She has stolen a healing. Can it be done, right?

And here's what happens. Just when she thinks she can get away, and immediately, Jesus knew in himself, power had gone out of him.

And turning around in the crowd, he said, who touched my garment?

Now at this point, we know from her reaction that her blood runs cold. She goes from knowing she's healed to absolutely terrified.

Because you can almost hear it. Oh no, here it comes. Jesus is going to let her have it.

And he's going to let her have it hard. How dare you, an unclean woman who's been put out of the synagogue because you're a sinner, you are under a curse, and you are under a scourge.

How dare you come and steal a healing from me? That's what she's expecting. Because that's what the law gives.

Each and every one of us, when we look at God's law, we all know that is what we deserve.

We do not deserve kind words from God. All of the times we've committed adultery, all of the times that we've committed idolatry and had other gods, all of the times we've lied, all of the times we've stolen, every time we've torn down our neighbor's reputation with our gossip.

Each and every one of us, even in our own heart, because the law is written on our hearts, knows that what we deserve from God is not kindness, but his wrath.

Not a warm embrace, but the back of his hand. We all know this.

And this is what she's expecting. So Jesus turns around, who touched my garment?

And the disciple said to him, Jesus, you see the crowd crowding you?

How can you say who touched me? And he says, and he looked around to see who had done it.

He's hunting now. Where's the person who touched me? I guess she didn't get away with it.

And here's what it says. Hey, they go. The woman having great fear and trembling.

She's totally come unglued. You ever been so scared that you begin to shake uncontrollably and you think, why am

I shaking? That's what's happening to this woman. She has great fear and she's utterly trembling down to her core.

She knew what had happened to her. And she came and fell before Jesus. And it says, she told him the whole truth.

This is a confession. She told him everything. So there she is.

And you can tell she's a mess. You cannot have this kind of fear and trembling and not have huge gushing, big tears and sobs and mucus coming out of your nose.

She's an utter wreck. And what is she expecting?

Wrath. She's expecting a beating. To be publicly ridiculed, rebuked.

This is what she's expecting. But he said to her, first word, daughter.

First word, not a word of wrath, not a word of rebuke.

First word, daughter. With that word,

Jesus says, I love you. With that word, he says, you're mine.

This is God in human flesh. And his word to her, his daughter, his word to you.

His daughter, his word to you, his son. Knowing that we deserve

God's wrath. Knowing that we are sinners. Jesus is going to the cross to bleed and to die for her sins.

And it's not wrath. It's not how dare you. It's daughter.

Daughter, your faith has saved you. Jesus said.

That's what it says. Hey, pistas, sue, say, so can say your faith has saved you.

Listen to these words. Go in peace. Go in peace and be healthy from your scourge.

That's what the Greek says. Go in peace and be healthy from your scourge.

He read her mind. Because she sat inside of herself. If only I touched the hem of his garment,

I will be healed from the scourge. And he says to her, go in peace and be healthy.

Be healed from the scourge. From the mastigas. He read her mind. What a kind and loving savior we have.

Not giving us what we deserve, even though the law condemns us and rightly so. Jesus tells us he loves us.

And because he has died for us, what he says to her, your faith has saved you is true of us as well.

Do you trust Jesus for the forgiveness of your sins that he has bled and died for you? Have you been washed in the waters of your baptism and given faith?

Jesus says to you, son, daughter, your faith has saved you.

And all of that is given as a gift from God. What a beautiful story.

But remember, all of this is taking place while the hourglass is running out.

Poor Jarius, man. He's racing the clock. His daughter is about to die.

And now Jesus has been delayed. And here's what it says.

While he was still speaking, those from the synagogue ruler came saying, your daughter has died.

Why is there still trouble, the teacher? I pray

I never have to hear those words. Your daughter has died. Just imagine what he felt in that moment.

Has anybody ever conveyed news to you that when you heard the words of what they were telling you, it changed everything?

And in that moment, even your own blood ran cold. It's like getting punched in the face. These are not words that any parent could bear.

And you can just imagine what poor Jarius went through. The race was for nothing. He lost.

The sand ran out. He knew Jesus could heal, but raise somebody from the dead.

Only God can do that. So there he is. And in that moment, you hear nothing.

It just, I failed. But Jesus refused to listen to the word they were speaking.

That's what the text says. Jesus refused to listen to the word. These words hit him in the face.

Then Jesus springs into action, says, I'm not listening to any of those words.

I don't want to hear this. And he said to the synagogue ruler, he literally turns to Jarius and he says, do not fear, only believe, no fear, just believe.

And Jesus would not permit anyone to accompany him except for Peter, James, and John, the brother of James.

Now keep this in mind. We all have something in common with Jarius. We're all dying.

And because of our sinful condition, we lose people we love. They die.

They get sick. They don't get better. They get worse and they die. And ultimately that's what's going to happen to all of us.

The wages of sin is death. And so Jesus's word to Jarius, do not fear, only believe.

These are words also spoken to us. Because you're going to find out that Jesus can not only heal, but Jesus can raise the dead.

And he has promised you that he's going to raise you on the last day.

Because you are in him and you trust and believe in him. So do not fear when death comes your way.

Do not fear when those you love who are in the faith approach their death. Do not fear, only believe.

Trust these promises. So Jesus wouldn't permit anyone to accompany him.

The crowd, this is not going to be a show. We got some work to do. Peter, James, and John, one more person necessary to create a rock solid eyewitness account.

Two were necessary to establish a matter. Jesus brought three. They came to the home of the synagogue ruler and Jesus observes the tumult and the weeping and the great wailing, which is kind of a weird thing in the culture of the day.

There's still cultures that do this today, but back in those days they had professional mourners.

Why? I don't know. Just a weird thing. And so these are the professional mourners who are hired to mourn.

And they're carrying on like this. They still do this in Haiti and other countries.

If you've ever seen an account of a funeral in Haiti, this is how it's done. So there's great weeping and tumult.

And entering, Jesus says, Why are you in tumult and weeping?

The child is not dead, but is sleeping. By the way, only Jesus gets to talk this way about death.

But this tells us something about our own deaths. Our own death is really not death because we're in Christ.

It's just a matter of falling asleep and then being awoken on the last day. And then it says this,

They laughed at Jesus. And a great verb here. He threw them out.

You see, Jesus, get out of here. He threw them out and he takes the father of the child and the mother with him and enters where the child was.

And he grasped the hand of the child. And he says to her, And it's almost that same kind of endearing way of saying it, the way he said it to the woman with the flow of blood, where he said to her,

Daughter, it's a term of endearment. He now says to this little girl, which is translated,

Little girl, I tell you to arise. Now, how many of you seen the movie

Hook? You all seen the movie Hook? Okay. You remember that Maggie and her brother are taken captive in Neverland by Captain Hook.

And Peter Pan ultimately saves them and they come back. And there's kind of a subplot in all of this.

And that is that Maggie and Jack's mother is just beside herself because her children are gone.

And at the very end of the movie, when they return, she's in their nursery asleep on a chair.

And then they wake her up. And when they wake her up, she's so overcome with joy and shock to see them again, that she just loses it.

I think this is what's going on in this text. So Jesus says to her, which is translated,

Little girl, I tell you to arise. And immediately the little girl got up and walked for she was 12 years old. And they were amazed immediately with great amazement.

This father and mother, they just lost their daughter.

And the mom was there when she died. Jarius wasn't. She just had all of those emotions of now what have

I done? I've lost my daughter. She's dead. Being there by her side while she's going through vomiting and the fever and it not breaking and being in and out of consciousness and praying and nothing happening.

And then finally losing her. And there's Jesus. And he comes in and literally raises her from the dead.

And she gets up and joy, confusion, amazement.

It's all there, right? They were amazed with a great amazement.

And then he says this. Jesus commanded them strongly. Don't tell anyone about this.

This is for you. I care about you. This is not about some show, some miracle healing circus that I'm putting on.

This is me telling you, I love you. And I care about your family. And I care about you as an individual.

And I care. And I'm here to save you. No need to go and make a spectacle of all of this.

You have your daughter back. And then it says, and he said, and give her something to eat.

This poor little girl who couldn't keep anything down who died. Jesus cares even about her knowing that now that she's been raised from the dead, she has an empty stomach and it's time for her to give her something to eat.

And what does this text tell us? This text tells us that Jesus cares for us individually.

He's not too busy or too preoccupied with the crowd.

The world to care for your needs. And he does care for you and he's kind and he's loving and he's merciful.

And when he calls you, he calls you by name. And he calls you with words that says that he loves you.

He knows your sin and he's bled and died for all of it. And he calls us to repent each and every one of us of our sins and to be forgiven.

So that we can pray to him as our brother, as our family member, as one who cares for us, who bled and died for us, and who would do anything for us for our good.

He's gone to the cross for you. He suffered the scourge for you.

He bled for you. He died for you. He rose for you. So that you would not have to face the wrath of God.

Or hear from the law to hell with you. But instead here, come into my father's kingdom.

You who are blessed. For he's bled and died for you.

And his wrath is only for a moment. And his blessing and his grace and his mercy is for a lifetime.

A lifetime in eternity. Don't ever tell me that Jesus isn't loving and kind.

He's all of that. He's all of that and more. He's that for you.

He's that for me. He's that for the world. So let us then put away our wickedness, put away our sin.

And walk in freedom, not in slavery to the devil. Because Jesus is so kind.

Remember it says that we love him because he first loved us.

And it's God's kindness that leads us to repentance. If he's going to do this for us, then we ought to respond in penitent faith.

And no longer do the works of the devil. But walk as children of the light. In Jesus name.

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

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

Kungsvinger Lutheran Church, 15950 470th

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

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