NEW CORINTHIAN B.C. of PASADENA
An Inspiring Sermon Series
“More Than Conquerors”
By: Pastor F. Demond Harris
Divine Side Orders
Mark 5: 25-34
*INTRODUCTION
A side order is an unexpected situation or thing that may arise throughout the course of a day. It is that thing that comes up that puts your day 2 hours behind.
*The child is sick at school and needs to be picked up
*The car got a flat overnight and you are already 20 minutes late for work
*The freeway is jammed which will put you 30 minutes later than you already are
-These are all things that come up to hinder us from meeting that planned destiny or purpose.
*Sometimes side orders are divinely prescribed by God to order our stepped to our land of promise or breakthrough.
*In this text we’ll discover that even Jesus was not exempt from side-order situations. On many occasions he found himself in situations that wasn’t a part of his daily to-do list.
*Jesus understood that the enemy sometimes distracts us from continuing in the will of God by issuing side-orders to serve as distractors. Jesus is the master of every situation and the conqueror of every trick of the enemy. In this chapter Jesus deals with four situations and one of them was a side order.
*Mark records four miracles that Jesus performed, and each of them shows Jesus getting the victory in each of them.
Victory over danger
Victory over demons
Victory over disease
Victory over death
*Mark highlights this particular story of this nameless woman with an issue of blood. Jesus had been busy in ministry and had just calmed a storm with faithless disciples and met a man with demons in a graveyard in the Gadarenes. Now he returns to his unofficial home Capernaum.
*One crowd cried to see him leave while another crowd was waiting to welcome him home. In the latter crowd stood two people who were especially anxious to see Him, Jairus, a man with a dying daughter; and an anonymous woman suffering from an incurable disease. It was Jairus who approached Jesus first, but it was the woman who was helped first.
*The contrast between these two people who anxiously waited for Jesus is striking and reveal the true Love and Mercy of Jesus.
*Jarius was an important synagogue officer; She was considered a nobody
Yet Jesus welcomed and helped both of them
*Jairus was about to loose a daughter who had given him 12 years of happiness; the woman was about to loose an affliction that had brought her 12 years of sorrow.
*Being a synagogue officer no doubt made Jarius very rich but his wealth could not save his dying daughter. The woman was already bankrupt! She had given the doctors all of her money, and yet none of them could cure her. Both Jarius and this woman found the answer to their needs at the foot of Jesus.
*This woman had a hemorrhage that was apparently incurable and was slowly destroying her. One can only imagine the pain and emotional pressure that sapped her strength day after day. When you consider her many disappointments with the doctors and the poverty it brought her, you wonder how she endured as long as she did.
*There was one added burden: she was ceremonial unclean, which greatly restricted both her religious and social life (Lev. 15:19). What a burden she carried!!!
*However, she let nothing stand in her way as she pushed through the crowd and came to Jesus. She could have used many excuses to convince herself to stay away from Jesus:
-“I’m not important enough to ask Jesus for help!”
-“He’s already going with Jarius, I won’t bother him now”
-“Nothing else have worked so why try anything else”
-She could have considered why come to Jesus as the last resort after trying so many other Physicians. However, she laid aside all excuses and arguments and came by faith to the GREAT PHYSICIAN – Jesus Christ!!!
*What kind of faith did she have? It was weak, timid and perhaps somewhat superstitious. She kept saying to herself that she had to touch His clothes in order to be healed. She had heard reports of other being healed by Jesus, so she made this one great attempt to get through to the Savior. She was not disappointed: Jesus honored her faith, weak as it was, and healed her body.
*There is a good lesson here for all of us. Not everybody has the same degree of faith, but Jesus responds to faith no matter how feeble it might be. When we believe, He shares His power with us and something happens in our lives. There were many others in that crowd who were close to Jesus and even pressing against Him, but they experienced no miracles. Why? Because they did not have faith. They were just “Religious Looky Loo’s”. It is one thing to THRONG HIM and another thing to TRUST HIM.
*The woman planned to slip away and get lost in the crowd, but Jesus turned and stopped her. Tenderly, He requested from her a testimony of what had happened to her. Why did Jesus deal with her publicly and not privately?
#1 – He did it for her own sake. He wanted to be to her something more than a healer; He wanted to be her Savior and Friend as well. He wanted her to look into His face, feel His tenderness, and hear His loving words of assurance. By the time He finished speaking to her, she experienced something more than physical healing. He called her Daughter and sent her on her way with a benediction of peace. To “be made whole” meant much more than receiving mere physical healing. Jesus had given her spiritual healing as well.
#2 – He did it for the sake of Jairus. His daughter was close to death, and he needed all the encouragement he could get. It was bad enough that the crowd was stopping their progress, but now this woman had to interfere and stop Jesus! When one of Jarius’ friends arrived and announced that the girl had died, no doubt Jarius felt that the end had come. The lord’s words to the woman about faith and peace must have encouraged Jarius as much as they encouraged her.
#3 – He did it so that she might have the opportunity to share her testimony and glorify the Lord. Psalms 107:2 – says “Let the redeemed of the Lord say so”. No doubt that some of the people in that crowd heard her testimony and trusted in the Savior.
