Desperate Measures

1. Mark 5.21-43 (also in Matthew 9.18-26; Luke 8.40-56)

2. Bible as a Compass

Just before the outbreak of the First World War, a small ship named the Endurance set sail from Briton with a crew intent on being the first to cross the South Pole. The ship reached Antarctica, but became ice-bound in the Weddle Sea. Soon they had to abandon their ship and the 28-man crew took to their lifeboats.

They were trapped on the ice for over a year. A desperate decision was made to take four men in a 20-foot lifeboat across the roughest sea in the world to a whaling station on South Georgia Island some 800 miles away. At the helm was a man named Worsely. All he had to guide them those 800 miles to South Georgia Island was a map, a watch, a sexton, and a compass, but it was all he needed if he used them well. A mistake as minor as being off by only one degree would have proved disastrous.

The four men in that boat endured seas that raged higher than a ten-story building. They were constantly cold and wet from the waves that constantly drenched the boat. They had only the most meager of rations. The journey did not take days, but two weeks. But Worsley, whose most sophisticated tool was a compass, managed to get that lifeboat the 800 miles to South Georgia Island and eventually the entire crew of the Endurance was saved. As a result, Worsley was a hero.

The whaling captains who sailed those waters considered him one of the wisest navigators in the world. Worsley was brilliant, but all of his brilliance would have been worthless if he not used the compass. Worsley was wise because he used the compass to guide him. Being wise is a matter of using the compass you've been given to get where you need to go. Fools choose not to use the compass.

3. The story in Capernaum of Jairus and the Woman with the Issue of Blood need to be read together. Tonight we will emphasize the woman, but there are parallels with Jairus and us.

4. The Story Reveals three Actions

I. The Action of Compassion

A. Jesus Demonstrates the Incarnation of God's Compassion

1. This is a key quality of God -- 1 Peter 3.20b-21

when God's patience waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was being prepared, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were brought safely through water. 21 Baptism, which corresponds to this, now saves you, not as a removal of dirt from the body but as an appeal to God for a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ,

2. Filled Full in Jesus --

Matthew 15.32 (the 4000) Then Jesus called his disciples to him and said, "I have compassion on the crowd because they have been with me now three days and have nothing to eat. And I am unwilling to send them away hungry, lest they faint on the way."

Luke 15.20 when God's patience waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was being prepared, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were brought safely through water. 21 Baptism, which corresponds to this, now saves you, not as a removal of dirt from the body but as an appeal to God for a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ,

B. Jesus Demonstrates Unexpected Compassion to Two Women

1. Rabbis ignored the testimony of women

2. Yet, who is first to get the news of the Resurrection?

3. Jesus Partnered with women in his ministry -- Luke 8.1-3

4. Here a sick woman and dying girl

5. His compassion towards you and me -- Acts 17.26-28

26 And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, 27 that they should seek God, and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him. Yet he is actually not far from each one of us, 28 for "'In him we live and move and have our being'; as even some of your own poets have said, "'For we are indeed his offspring.'

II. The Action of Desperation

A. The Prominent Jairus

1. Synagogue Ruler -- well known (Nasi)

2. Reminder of the Prominent Judge, Jair (Yair) in Judges 10.3-5

3. He went outside his comfort zone and approached the unauthorized Jesus for healing

a. Risked Humiliation (note -- he fell at Jesus' feet)

b. Rejection of the People

4. Compelled by the love for his 12 year old daughter -- Nowhere else to turn

B. The Unknown Woman

1. Her Unclean State -- Leviticus 15.19-33; Ezekiel 36.17

a. Not a moral condition; state of being in which we all find ourselves from time to time