Victory Over Death

Victory over death

Mark 5:21-43

peerless Sept 27 2009

Introduction

• This passage is a study in contrasts

• Jairus was a rich man

• The woman was broke

• He was a synagogue official

• She was an outcast

• she was afraid to approach Jesus

• Jairus went right up to Him

• Jairus’ daughter was twelve years old

• The woman had been fighting her problems for twelve years.

• Although the people are totally different, they have some things in common

• They both have found themselves helpless

• They both have heard that Jesus can help

• They both seek Him out to take care of their needs

I. Waiting when it’s hard

A. Jairus had to wait for Jesus to deal with the woman

1. He asked Jesus for help

2. He waited while Jesus helped others

B. We sometimes are asked to wait

Isa 40:31

31 Yet those who wait for the LORD

Will gain new strength;

They will mount up with wings like eagles,

They will run and not get tired,

They will walk and not become weary

Several years ago, the London Transit Authority had a problem. Buses were going right past passengers who were waiting at designated places to be picked up. They were at the bus stops, and the buses were sailing right past them. The London Transit Authority released a statement to explain their actions. The statement said it was impossible for them to maintain schedules if they always had to stop and pick up passengers.

Transition Waiting is tough, but to see God working in others people’s lives while you sit waiting has got to really make it tough. You may find yourself asking the question why is God taking care of them and not me? That question may have crossed Jairus’s mind when word came that his child had died.

II. Only Believe

A. Jairus was asked to “only believe” that everything would be okay

1. Common sense says it’s over she’s gone

2. Jesus said “Don’t be afraid”

Why do we call grace amazing? Grace is amazing because it works against the grain of common sense. Hard-nosed common sense will tell you that you are too wrong to meet the standards of a holy God; pardoning grace tells you that it’s all right in spite of so much in you that is wrong.

Realistic common sense tells you that you are too weak, too harassed, too human to change for the better; grace gives you power to send you on the way to being a better person. Plain common sense may tell you that you are caught in a rut of fate or futility; grace promises that you can trust God to have a better tomorrow for you than the day you have made for yourself.

-- Lewis Smedes in How Can It Be All Right When Everything Is All Wrong? (quoted by Martin E. Marty in Context). Christianity Today, Vol. 37, no. 8.

The majority of us do not enthrone God, we enthrone common sense. We make our decisions and then ask the real God to bless our god’s decision.

-- Oswald Chambers in The Oswald Chambers Devotional Reader. Christianity Today, Vol. 36, no. 9.

B. Jesus wants us to do the same Do not be afraid, and only believe

Transition: For Jairus the wait must have been excruciating. The knowledge that his daughter died had to have ripped his heart out. But still he did what Jesus asked. He only believed. And Jesus can work with that. He can work where there is faith

Matthew 13:58 (NASB)

III. The reward of faith

A. Jairus’s faith is rewarded

1. The unbelieving laughed at Jesus’s word

2. Faith hangs onto His every word.

B. Our faith will be rewarded.

When? In Jesus’s time. Not in our time, and not always in our way, but it will be rewarded.

Jesus Christ has the power over demons, disease, and death. All we are asked to do is only trust Him.

Does this mean you will be healed immediately if you ask.

Paul wasn’t 2 Cor 12:7

Acts 12 –James and John were beheaded

New American Standard Bible

Romans 8:37 (NASB)