#23: When All Hope Is Gone
Series: Acts
Chuck Sligh
July 19, 2020
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TEXT: Mark 5:21-34 – “And when Jesus was passed over again by ship unto the other side, much people gathered unto him: and he was nigh unto the sea. 22 And, behold, there cometh one of the rulers of the synagogue, Jairus by name; and when he saw him, he fell at his feet, 23 And besought him greatly, saying, My little daughter lieth at the point of death: I pray thee, come and lay thy hands on her, that she may be healed; and she shall live. 24 And Jesus went with him; and much people followed him, and thronged him. 25 And a certain woman, which had an issue of blood twelve years, 26 And had suffered many things of many physicians, and had spent all that she had, and was nothing bettered, but rather grew worse, 27 When she had heard of Jesus, came in the press behind, and touched his garment. 28 For she said, If I may touch but his clothes, I shall be whole. 29 And straightway the fountain of her blood was dried up; and she felt in her body that she was healed of that plague. 30 And Jesus, immediately knowing in himself that virtue had gone out of him, turned him about in the press, and said, Who touched my clothes? 31 And his disciples said unto him, Thou seest the multitude thronging thee, and sayest thou, Who touched me? 32 And he looked round about to see her that had done this thing. 33 But the woman fearing and trembling, knowing what was done in her, came and fell down before him, and told him all the truth. 34 And he said unto her, Daughter, thy faith hath made thee whole; go in peace, and be whole of thy plague.”
INTRODUCTION
Illus. – Over the years I have known a number of people who have had chronic conditions of one sort or the other. Frequently, it’s chronic pain, sometimes a chronic disease, often a chronic injury. They have gone from doctor to doctor, and spent a fortune just to find relief, often to little avail. Sometimes their medical help has only worsened their condition. If their condition is serious enough, they would do ANYTHING to find relief. It’s a horrible way to live.
This morning we’re going to hear about a woman who had a chronic condition that lasted 12 years and which debilitated her physically, emotionally, socially and religiously. She was so tired of her illness that she acted in a desperate faith that received Jesus’ approval. We’ll also hear the beginning of another story of a man who also had a desperate need that was infuriatingly interrupted by this desperate woman.
So let’s look today Mark 5:21-34, another example of Mark sandwiching one story in the middle so another story.
I. NOTICE FIRST, THE MAN WITH A DESPERATE NEED. – Verses 21-23 – “And when Jesus had crossed over again by boat to the other side, a large crowd gathered around him: and he was by the sea. 22 And, behold, one of the rulers of the synagogue came, Jairus by name; and when he saw him, he fell at his feet, 23 And begged him earnestly, saying, ‘My little daughter lies at the point of death: please come and lay your hands on her, that she may be healed and live.’ 24 And Jesus went with him; and a great crowd followed him and thronged about him.”
In verse 21, Jesus returned from Gadarene back to the west side of the Sea of Galilee. Once on the other side of the lake, immediately Jesus was again besieged by large crowds.
Then a man named Jairus, a ruler of the synagogue, ran up to Jesus. The title of “ruler” was given to a person who was the administrative head of a synagogue. Most synagogues did not have a priest or other official teacher but was overseen by a group of lay elders. The “ruler” of a synagogue was the head elder and was responsible for the good management of the synagogue as well as the conduct of its services.
So Jairus was a big shot in his synagogue and in his community. But he doesn’t come up to Jesus with a self-important air here. He prostrates himself in the most humble fashion before Jesus and earnestly begs Jesus to come and heal his daughter who was “at the point of death.”
Jairus no doubt had heard of the controversies that surrounded Jesus and knew of the antagonism of the official religious class towards Him. Yet he had heard of Jesus’ power to heal and may even have seen Jesus heal or talked with someone who had been healed. So it’s doubtful that he was a believer or follower of Christ at this point. Yet he humbles himself and begs for Jesus’ healing for his daughter.
In other words, he was desperate! His dignity was forgotten, his pride was put aside, what his synagogue or his friends thought went out the window. Only one thing was important: to get to Jesus, the only hope he had left for healing for his precious daughter.
Jairus is like many people who come to Christ. It was not a love for Christ that brought him to lay prostrate at Jesus’ feet; it was HIS NEED; it was the desperation of his situation…and a glimmer of hope. Maybe Jesus, the miracle worker, can heal her, he thought. Despair is often the prelude to grace.
Jesus immediately sensed Jairus’s desperate condition and could not turn a blind eye to such anxious suffering. So without a word, Mark says Jesus went with him.
Unfortunately, the crowd thronged about Him, impeding their way. This must have been exceedingly vexing for Jairus. His daughter was at the point of death and every single minute counted. The crowds were not acting maliciously—they just wanted to see what would happen next—yet you can just picture this poor man counting the time as they slowly wind their way through the crowd to Jairus’s house. It felt like an ambulance in heavy traffic…and it was about to get worse!
II. IN VERSES 25-32 WE SEE A DIVINE DELAY.
Look at verse 25 – “And there was a certain woman, who had a flow of blood twelve years, 26 And had suffered much under many physicians, and had spent all that she had, and was no better, but rather grew worse”
Suddenly, Mark interrupts the story of Jairus’s daughter and starts to tell us about a woman with a need that, to her, was almost as desperate as Jairus’s. She had some kind of continuous blood hemorrhage that had lasted 12 years. Mark doesn’t tell us the nature of the hemorrhage, but it had driven this poor woman to the point of absolute despair. Mark says she “suffered much” which in the Greek is a graphic expression meaning, “whip, lash, scourge, or torment.”
Verse 26 lays out her sad spiral into hopelessness: She had this blood flow she could not stop; then she suffered as if in torment from many doctors; in the process, she lost all her wealth; all the while her condition had not improved and in fact, had only got WORSE.
Mark leaves one thing out that his Jewish readers would have known about this woman. A bleeding person was considered ceremonially unclean under Jewish law. This meant that she was shunned by society and excluded from worship in the synagogue and temple. So not only had her condition left her bleeding, bankrupt and progressively worse, she was virtually ostracized, lonely and abandoned. Like Jairus, she too was truly desperate!
We read in verses 27-29, “When she had heard of Jesus, she came behind him in the crowd, and touched his garment. 28 For she said, ‘If I just touch his clothes, I will be made well.’ 29 And immediately the flow of blood dried up; and she felt in her body that she was healed of her affliction.”
In spite of her ritual uncleanness, this woman joined the crowd thinking that she could be made well if she just touched His garment. All my commentaries said her actions were based on quasi-magical beliefs of that day that a strong or holy person’s garments had healing powers.
Yet underneath her theological ignorance was genuine faith—and that faith paid off. Verse 29 tells us that she “felt” in her body she was healed. The Greek word literally means “to know something experientially” (ginosko). By some physical sensation, she KNEW she was healed.
Verses 30-32 says, “And Jesus, immediately, knowing in himself that power had gone out of him, turned around in the crowd, and said, ‘Who touched my clothes?’ 31 And his disciples said to him, ‘You see the multitude thronging you, and you say, Who touched me?’ 32 And he looked around to see her who had done this.”
Jesus immediately knew in Himself that healing power had gone out of Him. He knew that his garment had been touched by the hand of faith. In fact, he knew WHO had touched Him. His question was not for His benefit, but for the woman’s. Some THING (power) had gone out of Jesus, and He had been willing for the healing power to be released to heal her, but He wanted to establish a personal relationship with her. He wanted her to know the One who had imparted to her His healing power, not to assume that the power was in His clothing. And He wanted her to have the courage to confess openly her deed of faith.
The disciples were puzzled by Jesus’ question. “You ask who touched you? Lord, hundreds of people have touched you. What are you talking about?”
But Jesus would not be sidetracked and looked around to see the woman who had done this, I think because she was probably hiding behind someone. Would she come forth and profess her deed of faith?
Verses 33-34 say, “But the woman, fearing and trembling, knowing what had happened to her, came and fell down before him, and told him the whole truth. 34 And he said to her, ‘Daughter, your faith has made you well. Go in peace, and be healed of your affliction.’”
Yes!—She passed her first step of discipleship, even though she was fearful. She came forward and told the truth, expecting a reprimand from Jesus…but instead, she got a blessing. He called her “Daughter,” the only time Jesus ever referred to anyone by that name in the gospels. This signified that more happened than just a healing. She not only was healed, but she was redeemed! Her faith had made her well because her faith, though theologically mixed-up, was in the right object—in Jesus Christ.
R. Kent Hughes, in his brilliant commentary says,
The woman’s faith was at its core an ignorant faith. She sought a cure that was essentially magic-secured (touching the edge of his robe)…. Her faith was uninformed, presumptuous, and superstitious, but it was real, and Christ honored her imperfect faith.
God still does the same thing today. Beginning faith is often uninformed and mixed with many errors about, for example, Christ’s person, the Incarnation, the Trinity, the Atonement, grace/works, the Scriptures, etc. However, such foggy understandings are often the beginning of a deep, informed trust in God. We can take courage in this. One does not need to have it all figured out to possess a faith which pleases God. This is why a child can come to Christ. This is why God often saves those who know virtually no theology. This does not minimize deep understanding, which is meant to foster a profound faith. The point is, a faith that pleases God does not belong only to the informed elite.
III. FINALLY, WE SEE A FRUSTRATING INTERRUPTION.
The “rest of the story”—the original story of Jairus’s daughter—is in verses 35-43, which we will look at next week. We can speculate what must have been going on in Jairus’s mind at this point in the story. He begs Jesus to come to save his child, and without comment, Jesus heads immediately to Jairus’s house. But soon they find themselves thronged by the crowd, slowing them down considerably. His daughter was at the point of death; there was no time to lose; every second counted; they had to keep going, but they were delayed by the crowds.
And then JESUS stops everything and asks who touched Him. This must have been excruciatingly frustrating to Jairus. Now there was ANOTHER delay. Then the woman came forward and couldn’t just give Jesus the short version of her life, right? Noooooo.—Verse 33 says she told Him “the WHOLE truth.” Tick, tick, tick…Can you just imagine how Jairus must have felt?
He might have even been judgmental of her. He was a highly respected religious leader; Jesus stopped to interact with an unclean woman who had not been to synagogue in twelve years! How dare she interrupt them when he, a devoted follower of the Law, needed Jesus’ help.
And yet Mark does not record anything from Jairus. Was he quietly urging Jesus to keep going? Was he trying to politely stay quiet so he wouldn’t upset Jesus, his only hope left to make his daughter well again? Was he about to HAVE A HEART-ATTACK?!!! We don’t know; Mark is silent about that.
As we’ll see next week, the girl did die sometime on during Jairus’s mission to get Jesus. When he got the news, Jairus was devastated! But don’t worry: Jesus knew all along what was going on, and He had a plan to perform a miracle which would make all other miracles he had performed pale by comparison. But we’ll have to wait until next week to see what happened!
CONCLUSION
A.
B. As we think about this passage of Scripture, what should we learn from it from a personal standpoint?
C. Two things come to my mind…
First, I want to share an application for all of you who are believers today.
Part of the drama of this story is that there was a delay in God’s working. Jairus had to wait what seemed like an eternity to see God work. Yet it was all according to God’s timetable.
John tells us about the sickness of Lazarus. Mary and Martha, his sisters, sent someone to fetch Jesus to come and heal Lazarus. But Jesus decided to wait two whole days before leaving to go to Judea where Lazarus and Mary and Martha were. By the time He arrived there, Lazarus had been dead three days.
When Mary saw Him, she said “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” Of course, we know the rest of the story—how Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead. But why would Jesus wait two days to begin with? Out of three resurrections, Jesus could have made it in time to save them from death, but He delayed in coming in two out of the three resurrections.
Why would He do that? When He first got the news that Lazarus was sick, Jesus explained in John 11:4 that He did it “for the glory of God, that the Son of God might be glorified by it.”
It seems like whenever we want God to act, we want Him to act on our timetable. But God is not bound by our schedule. He operates on His own schedule for His own purposes and goals. He wants us to trust Him to know what He is doing. He does that to deepen our faith.
Illus. – The fern and the bamboo both have their place in the forest. A fern seed drops to the ground and comes up the next season and grows a few feet high, depending on the variety of the fern.
On the other hand, the bamboo seed does not produce a sapling above the ground for five years. Suddenly it shoots up out of the ground the fifth year. It can grow as high as 100 feet within 6 months of that first little shoot out of the ground!
What’s going on those five years? All that time the bamboo was growing strong roots deep into the ground.
God has a timetable for the fern to grow and bamboo to grow, and He has a timetable for you. When you face delays and interruptions in your plans, realize that God is trying to deepen you in your faith and help you to realize that He has His own plans for you. His timing is always perfect.
Illus. – Writing about God’s sure guidance, British pastor Frank W. Boreham recounted a time when a minister visited his home in New Zealand. Being young and inexperienced, Boreham sought the counsel of his guest. One morning they were sitting on the veranda of his house, looking out over the golden plains to the purple sunlit mountains. He asked the minister, “Can a man be sure that in the hour of perplexity he will be rightly led by God? Can he feel secure against making a false step?”
“I am certain of it,” exclaimed the minister, “if he will but give God time! As long as you live, remember that. Give God time!”
A second application is that the stories of Jairus and the woman with the chronic hemorrhage are pictures of any person who is without Christ.
If you are without Christ this morning, your situation is desperate! You are lost in sin and under God’s divine judgment. There is no hope outside of Jesus Christ. In the story today, I see two imperatives for you if you have never been saved by God’s grace:
Number one, come as you are.
This woman did not know theologically what she was doing. She didn’t wait until she was prepared to get a healing from Jesus. She came to Him a hot mess—bleeding, bankrupt, helpless and abject. And Jesus healed her just as she was, with all her unbiblical understandings of healing or even who Jesus really was.
Your best hope…your ONLY hope…to be saved is to come to God just as you are. Bring all your sin to Him, all your needs to Him, all your worries to Him. He will clean you up and heal your sin-sick soul. Let your desperation drive you to God. Throw yourself at the feet of Jesus and reach for Him. Allow Him to purify you and forgive you of all your sin.
Second, believe in Jesus Christ!
Why did this woman take such social and legal risks to touch Jesus’ garment?—Because she believed doing so would heal her! She had tried everything: every doctor, every cure, and if she were living today she would have tried every mail-in ad, every online promise, every prescription drug, every herb and vitamin and essential oil—and nothing worked and in fact, she just got worse.
But her faith made her well! She just knew that if she could touch Jesus, she would be healed. She didn’t need His attention or His time or for Him to touch her. She just needed to touch His garment and that would be enough.
What about you?—Will you believe Jesus’ promise to save those who put their faith in Him? He promises in John 3:36 – “He who believes on the Son has everlasting life: and he who does not believe the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abides in him.”
Take Jesus at His word and turn from your sin and believe in Jesus Christ for salvation today.
