A Touching Story

6/6/04

Mark 5:21-43
A Touching Story

Dr. Derek Thomas

Last week we were looking at the story in the gospel of
Mark of the Gaderene–or was it the Garesene – or was it the Gargasene?–demoniac
on the other side of the Sea of Galilee. Tonight we come back across the lake,
and once again we discover Jesus involved in a healing ministry.

There are a couple of issues that
are often raised with regard to this story. The story is one that is told not
just in Mark’s gospel, but it’s also told in Matthew’s gospel and it’s also told
in Luke’s gospel. The first issue is, where exactly did this incident we’re
about to read–the healing, especially, and raising of the dead, of Jairus’s
twelve-year-old daughter–where exactly did that take place? In reading Mark’s
account (and perhaps somewhat naughtily if you’re reading the NIV account of
Mark’s gospel), the setting is very definitely beside the sea. Matthew places
the story earlier in the ministry of Jesus, and in Matthew’s account it comes
right after the calling of Matthew as a disciple. You remember Jesus went to
Matthew (or Levi)’s house that evening for dinner, entered into a conversation
with the Pharisees about fasting? And it was during that meal that Jairus
comes, informs Him that his daughter is “nigh unto death,” according to
Matthew’s gospel. The Internet is full of hysterical pieces claiming this is
evidence that the Bible isn’t inspired. This is another one of those
contradictions. The answer it seems to me is not to say…as, actually, a good
friend of ours, Robert Stein taught at Bethel Theological Seminary. Robert
Stein saw this as such a problem that he says that Jesus raised Jairus’s
daughter twice from the dead. I don’t think that’s the way to go about it. I
think the way to go about it is to understand that sometimes the gospel writers
are not telling the story in chronological sequence. They have an agenda: they
have a theological agenda. Mark very especially wants to show the deity
of Jesus, that He is indeed the Son of Man coming to the world to save sinners.
He’s grouping together here a whole lot of miracles in chapters 4 and 5. I
think the chronology is probably Matthew’s and that Mark is actually telling
this story out of chronological sequence. And that’s probably the answer to
that.

The other issue is the issue of whether the girl was dying or whether she was
dead. In Mark, the account (we’re about to read it), the first news is that
she’s dying; she’s close to death. But Matthew tells us that she was already
dead. I think the answer to that is what I heard Rosemary saying last night as
she was watching the Braves game in the seventh inning, “This game is over.”
Now it wasn’t over. There were two more innings to go, but as far as she was
concerned it was over. And Matthew is telling the story knowing what the
outcome is going to be. He’s saying, ‘Look, she’s dead.’ And actually the
Greek is capable of being translated, “She’s right at the point of death.” So,
no need for us in any way to have any distrust of the Bible as we read it…and
that’s the only point in telling you this. You can trust the Bible to be the
inerrant word of God. Before we read it together, let’s pray.

Our Father in heaven, we do
thank You for the Bible. We thank You for the way it challenges us, mystifies
us at times, warms and encourages our hearts, teaches us everything that we need
to know about You, about our Savior, about the way of salvation–all things
necessary to make us into the men and women of God that we ought to be. Now,
Holy Spirit, come as we read Your word. Give us illumination, we pray, for
Jesus’ sake. Amen.

Mark 5 and at verse 21:

“²¹When
Jesus had crossed over again in the boat to the other side, a large crowd
gathered around Him; and so He stayed by the seashore. ²²One of the
synagogue officials named Jairus came up, and on seeing Him, fell at His feet
²³and implored Him earnestly, saying, ‘My little daughter is at the
point of death; please come and lay Your hands on her, so that she will get well
and live.’ ²⁴And He went off with him; and a large crowd was
following Him and pressing in on Him. ²⁵A woman who had had a
hemorrhage for twelve years, ²⁶and had endured much at the hands of
many physicians, and had spent all that she had and was not helped at all, but
rather had grown worse– ²⁷after hearing about Jesus, she came up in
the crowd behind Him and touched His cloak. ²⁸For she thought, ‘If I
just touch His garments, I will get well.’ ²⁹Immediately the flow of
her blood was dried up; and she felt in her body that she was healed of her
affliction. ³⁰Immediately Jesus, perceiving in Himself that the
power proceeding from Him had gone forth, turned around in the crowd and said,
‘Who touched My garments?’ ³¹And His disciples said to Him, ‘You see
the crowd pressing in on You, and You say, “Who touched Me?”’ ³²And
He looked around to see the woman who had done this. ³³But the woman
fearing and trembling, aware of what had happened to her, came and fell down
before Him and told Him the whole truth. ³⁴And He said to her,
‘Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace and be healed of your
affliction.’ ³⁵While He was still speaking, they came from the house
of the synagogue official, saying, ‘Your daughter has died; why trouble the
Teacher anymore?’ ³⁶But Jesus, overhearing what was being spoken,
said to the synagogue official, ‘Do not be afraid any longer, only believe.’
³⁷And He allowed no one to accompany Him, except Peter and James and
John the brother of James. ³⁸They came to the house of the synagogue
official; and He saw a commotion, and people loudly weeping and wailing. ³⁹And
entering in, He said to them, ‘Why make a commotion and weep? The child has not
died, but is asleep.’ ⁴⁰They began laughing at Him. But putting them
all out, He took along the child’s father and mother and His own companions, and
entered the room where the child was. ⁴¹Taking the child by the
hand, He said to her, ‘Talitha kum!’ (which translated means, ‘Little girl, I
say to you, get up!’). ⁴²Immediately the girl got up and began to
walk, for she was twelve years old. And immediately they were completely
astounded. ⁴³And He gave them strict orders that no one should know
about this, and He said that something should be given her to eat.”

Amen. May God bless the reading of His holy and inerrant
word.

Now I bought a television about
eight years ago, and it boasted this wonderful thing called “picture in
picture.” I have never been able to get it to work. I have read the
instruction book which is in Egyptian hieroglyphics. I’ve no idea what it’s
saying and, in any case, Rosemary does not want this little box when the Braves
are on TV.

Listen to what Mark is doing
here. He’s giving us a picture within a picture. There are two different
stories going on here, but they are intimately related to each other. There are
some wonderful, quite extraordinary pastoral lessons to be drawn out and learned
from these two stories. We think we know Jesus. We think we know Him well. We
think we’re able to discern what His next move might be, how He might respond to
this or that. And then He does something that baffles us, angers us, frustrates
us. How many of you are dealing with that right now, and dealing with the
consequence that follows in its wake?–Cynicism, cynical about the promises of
the gospel. He says He loves you, but if He loved you He wouldn’t do what He’s
doing to you. Isn’t that the problem? So let’s look at these two stories
because they bring us right up close and personal to that issue we’ve just
raised together. The first thing I want us to see…and I want us to see three
things.

I. Jesus will sometimes ignore
your faith.
The first thing I want
us to see is that Jesus will sometimes ignore your faith. I put it like that.
Jesus will sometimes ignore your faith…or at least that’s how it looks. That’s
how it will feel to you. This man, Jairus–he’s a ruler of the synagogue, verse
22. His daughter is gravely, gravely ill. She’s at the point of death. She’s
twelve-years-old. She’s mortally ill. She…within minutes, an hour at most, she
is going to be dead. There’s an urgency about the situation here. When Brister
and Billy receive a call from one of the hospitals that one of you is in there
and you’re facing surgery, there’s a problem; they leave. They’re there within
minutes. I’ve seen them leave staff meetings. Brister’s been buzzed on his
buzzer and away he goes. That’s one of those things that I live with. I don’t
think I need therapy about it but I live with it.

I remember receiving news my
father was dying. I was in Belfast; he was in South Wales. I got on the first
plane that I could catch, drove immediately at great haste–and, yes, I broke the
speed limit. I remember driving at great haste to the airport, got on the first
plane I could. He died roughly 20 minutes before I got there. It took me
several hours, probably all of five or six hours to get from where I was to
where he was…20 minutes. You know what I thought? I still think it. I still
say, what’s 20 minutes to God? You know, what, what part of this universe would
be changed? What would be broken? What would be denied if He’d have given me
20 minutes? I still live with that. It’s one of those things that’s locked up
there in my mind. It’s one of those things…and you all have them. You can give
your own testament, your own example of that.

I was thinking of, you know,
Fiddler on the Roof, that wonderful lyric, “Lord, who made the lion and the
lamb, You decreed I should be what I am. Would it spoil some vast eternal plan
if I were a wealthy man?” Well, it’s not wealth we’re thinking about here; it’s
health–the health of someone that we love, the health of a child, a little
child. We feel it deeply when our children are sick. We feel it deeply when
our children are terminally sick. We Calvinists especially go through this
because we believe that God is sovereign. God orders all things from the end to
the beginning. Everything happens because God wills it to happen, because God
wills it to happen before it happens, and because God wills it to happen in the
way that it happens.

Jairus was a synagogue ruler in
Capernaum. Actually the ruins are still there. It’s one of the great sights.
Forget about Jerusalem, but Capernaum is a wonderful place to go. You can
almost shut your eyes. You can blot out that monstrosity of St. Peter’s
church. Just blot that out, and you see the lake, the Sea of Galilee and there,
right there, is the synagogue. And some archaeologists, some evangelical and
Reformed archeologists will tell you that some of the floor mosaics go right
back to Jesus’ time, to the time of Jairus. Jairus was apparently one of the
ones who had contributed some money for the erection of this synagogue. He was
the chief of the synagogue, the ro’sh ha-keneseth,
the man in charge, the man who had oversight of the synagogue, the man who’d
decide what readings would be read on the Shabbat, on the Sabbath day, the man
who would decide who would do those readings from the scroll. He would be the
one who would decide who would preach and explain the Torah. Ordinarily there’d
only be one and sometimes there were two.

Jairus is a public figure. He’s
well known in Capernaum…and he’s taking some degree of courage. He’s a Jew,
remember, and head of the Jewish synagogue in Capernaum, and he’s taking some
degree of courage now in coming to Jesus. And coming, as we were saying
earlier, not maybe to the lakeside as such…but Mark is telling somewhat out of
sequence…but perhaps to Matthew’s house, to that dinner as Matthew records it.
And he falls at Jesus’ feet. His little daughter is at the point of death.
Matthew says that she’s dead, you know…she’s as good as dead. Jairus has heard
Jesus speak. Capernaum was home base. He had done much ministry already in
Capernaum and maybe, maybe Jairus had given Jesus permission to speak in the
synagogue. Maybe it was Jairus who had said to Jesus, ‘You read this portion
from the prophets today,’ or whatever. He’d heard of the ministry that Jesus
had had. He has faith, some kind of faith that brings him now to the feet of
Jesus and then falls at His feet because his little girl is dying. He has faith
that Jesus can do something, that He can heal her. Note what he says in verse
23, “…And implored Him earnestly, saying, ‘My little daughter is at the point
of death; please come and lay Your hands on her, so that she will get well and
live.’” It’s not, it’s not an issue of “can You?” but “will
You?” He knows that Jesus can do this. It’s an issue of whether Jesus will
do it. ‘Will you come? Will you please come? Please come.’

There was a desperation here in
the words of Jairus and Jesus leaves immediately. That’s a wonderful thing,
isn’t it? Immediately Jesus goes with him. You know He’s still like that.
When He hears the cry of an anxious parent for a child He immediately responds.
He hears it immediately. And He goes towards the man’s house.

They’re out in the street now, in
the streets of Capernaum, heading towards Jairus’ house, and they’re walking
along the streets of Capernaum. And there’s a crowd, a large crowd, following
them, pushing and shoving and wanting to get up into the front so that they
could overhear what it was that Jesus might have been saying. And Jesus is no
doubt walking briskly and Jairus is walking even more briskly and looking back
and sort of urging Him on, ‘Come on; come on; come on. We’ve got no time to
lose.’ And you can imagine the scene because Jairus is still walking briskly
and suddenly Jesus isn’t there. And he looks back and to his consternation
Jesus is stopped and He’s talking to a woman. And he’s hearing Jesus say, “Who
touched Me?” ‘What?!’ The disciples say, ‘Don’t you see this crowd? Everybody
is touching you.’

And you can imagine Jairus’ mind:
it’s racing in a hundred directions. You know when you’re trying to get to…um,
I’m thinking in British terms…the A and E, the Accident and Emergency, the
Casualty…you know when you’re trying to get there in a hurry and your mind is
racing, and you’re trying to think ahead about where you’re going to park the
car and whether you’re going to bother locking it, and have you got your health
card with you? Have you got your wallet in your pocket and you’re anxiously
looking at the one sick. You just want to get there. And you can imagine
Jairus and he’s just totally bamboozled now because Jesus has stopped. And he’s
panicking and there’s a mixture of disbelief and anger in his mind. And as he
waits and as he looks in disbelief that Jesus is stopping and talking to this
woman when He knows the urgency, some friends from his house are coming down the
street and they say to him, ‘Your daughter is dead. It’s too late.’

And put yourself in Jairus’ mind
now. ‘If only Jesus hadn’t stopped. If only we’d have kept on going we could
have got there in time. Does He even care? Does He even care?’ He’s ignoring
this man’s faith…or at least that’s how it looks.

You remember the disciples in the boat waking Him
up? He’s sleeping in the midst of a storm and they wake Him up and they say,
‘Lord, don’t You care? Don’t You care that we perish?’

Does Jesus care when someone
He loves is sick? That’s the question in this story that’s before us tonight.
He cared enough to go with Jairus in the first place. He went immediately in
the direction of Jairus’ house but He stopped…He stopped and ignored him…or at
least it looks like that. I wonder if that’s where you are tonight, my friend.
It looks as if Jesus is ignoring you. It looks as if He’s forgotten about you.
You had some hopes; you had some aspiration; you had some indication that Jesus
was actually going to do something that you’ve asked Him to do and He stopped.
He stopped and you’ve become angry. And you’ve become cynical and you’re
listening to those people who are saying to Jairus, ‘Don’t bother Him now.
Don’t make a fool of yourself now because it’s too late and you are a fool to
have gone to Him in the first place.’ Jesus will sometimes ignore your faith.

II. Jesus will grow your faith.
But, in the second
place, Jesus will grow your faith. It’s an important lesson about suffering.
God’s providence is always instructive; it’s always educative. There’s a
purpose to what God does. There’s always a purpose. News comes from Jairus’
house that his daughter has died and they’re urging him not to make a spectacle
of himself. And note what Jesus does immediately, verse 36: He ignores what’s
just been said. His little girl is dead and Jesus ignores it. He doesn’t offer
Jairus any sympathy. He doesn’t hug him and say, ‘I’m here for you.’ He
doesn’t urge him to cry because “it’s okay for men to cry.” And all the time I
think there’s this little worm going around in Jairus’ head, ‘This man really
doesn’t care. He really doesn’t care. What a fool I’ve been to think that He
would.’

And then He hears Jesus speak
directly to him, ‘Don’t be afraid

And you notice the other thing is
the command to believe: “Just believe.” Jairus already believes, of
course, but Jesus is growing his faith. He’s growing his faith. Nothing
illustrates this more than this incredible story. It’s one thing to believe
that Jesus can heal someone; it’s another thing to believe that He can raise the
dead. “Just believe,” He says to him. ‘Commit yourself now, to Me’–You know,
faith, knowledge, ascent, trust, knowledge that Jesus can raise the dead,
believing that that is true and then committing yourself to it, launching
forth. Like that scene in Indiana Jones, you know, when he puts his foot
down and there’s nothing there; and he has to trust there’s something there.
“Just believe.”

That’s why this story about he
woman with the twelve-year hemorrhage is here. That’s why it’s this
picture-in-picture. What did she do? That’s exactly what she did: she
believed. She reached out and touched Him. I can’t tell you what her problem
was. I can hear my mother saying, ‘It was women’s problems.’ And we’ll leave
it at that. It was an issue that would “render a woman unclean,” Leviticus 15.
She’s had a terrible life for the past 12 years, socially an outcast. Anyone
coming into contact with her would be rendered immediately unclean. She’d spent
a fortune on doctors, medics, quacks. One can imagine the kind of things that
have been done to her. You know, the Talmud, which is an extensive Jewish
commentary on the law and the prophets, lists eleven cures for this problem.
One says that you’re to take gum–not chewing gum now, but resin and a crocus–and
bruise them together and put it in some wine and give it to the woman. And if
that doesn’t work, take some onions and boil them in wine and give it to the
woman and say, “Arise from thy flux.” And if that doesn’t work, you’re to go to
a place where two ways meet and with a cup of wine in your right hand let
someone come behind her when she doesn’t know and frighten or scare her to death
and say, “Arise from thy flux.” Maybe she had tried all of those quacky
things.

Instead, she had gone to Jesus.
She went to Jesus anonymously. And Jesus, Jesus felt that virtue had gone out
of Him. I can’t explain that. I don’t know how He knew that but He felt
it–something had gone out of Him. And He stopped and kept Jairus waiting in the
process until his little girl was dead. You see what He’s teaching Jairus – a
lesson about faith. ‘Jairus, look at this poor woman. Look at this poor
woman. Everybody despises her. Nobody wants to be near her. And she knows
that I can heal her.’ Her faith is uninformed. It’s bordering on the
superstitious.

That’s why Jesus has to stop and
explain to her and draw her out. She can’t go around in this anonymous way just
poking a finger at Jesus’ cloak and then perhaps thinking months, years later
that there was something magical about Jesus’ garments. No, she has to
understand that it’s faith in Jesus’ person that saves and that’s why Jesus
stops and talks and instructs her. It was her faith that saved her. But it
was a little faith, because of her little…It was a superstitious faith; it was
an uninformed faith.

A weak faith can lay hold of a
strong Christ. The promises of God, my friends, are not addressed to those
who have mighty faith but to those who have real faith. The promises
don’t come to sinners and say, ‘We want you to know that those who have giant
faith and who can work wonders and who can walk on water and can raise the dead
and can stop the mouths of lions–these are the people who shall be saved.’ No,
“whoever trusts in Jesus Christ shall not perish but have everlasting life.” If
your faith is as strong as a bruised reed, my friend, as a bruised reed, the
Lord will not break it. He will not break it.

How much knowledge did the dying
thief on the Cross have?….very, very little. But it laid hold on Christ.
That’s the thing. That’s the thing. “She only touched the hem of His garment,
as to His side she stole. Amid the crowd that gathered around Him, and straight
way she was made whole,” that 19^th century hymn says. Jesus is
growing her faith. He’s growing her faith. Her faith was superstitious and He
needed it to grow and to teach her.

III. Jesus will test your
faith.
But in the third place,
Jesus will test your faith. Oh, He was testing Jairus. The whole thing about
being made to wait was a test. Jesus gets to the house and already the
professional wailers are there. He’d already told the crowd back in the street
to stay where they were and He tells the people who are at the house to go out
and to stay outside. And only He and Peter, James, and John and the parents are
allowed inside the room where the little girl was. And then, and then He does
something. He’s done something extraordinary because He said to this crowd
outside of the house, “She’s not dead but she’s sleeping.” “She’s not dead but
she’s sleeping.”

Why did Jesus say that? She
was dead. You understand the problem that that brings because you can
guarantee that night in the inns in Capernaum people are saying things like,
‘She wasn’t dead at all; she was just sleeping. Jesus said so. And all this
talk about Jesus raising the dead, it’s all…it’s all nonsense. She was just
sleeping. They’re exaggerating it.’

And
it’s as though Jesus has almost said that story. Why is He doing that? Why
didn’t Jesus bring the girl outside into the street and have all the crowd there
watching Him and have someone come, poke her, pinch her, listen to her heart,
breathing, open her eyes, shine a light, see if the pupils–I don’t know whether
they knew all that back in the first century, but–whatever, test to see whether
she was dead? And then in a very dramatic way, give a little sermon about ‘I am
the Messiah and I can raise the dead. Now just watch Me do it.’ And perhaps
wait a day or two before He did it and this little girl’s corpse is beginning to
decompose and putrify, and then in a glorious, spectacular way, raise her from
the dead.

Why wouldn’t Jesus do that?
You’d do that if you were Jesus. Isn’t that the sort of thing you would want to
do? If God gave you the gift of raising people from the dead, you would want
people to see it. Why does Jesus keep people outside and why does He sow this
little seed that she’s not dead but sleeping?

Now Jesus meant sleeping in the
sleep of death that He can bring to life again, of course, but the crowd didn’t
hear that. They just heard that she was sleeping. And the only reason that I
can see is that for the rest of Jairus’ life that was going to be a test to him,
because whenever his little girl would be coming up the street, there would be
those saying, ‘Oh, here’s Jairus who thinks Jesus raised this little girl from
the dead but actually she was just sleeping. She was in a deep sleep, and Jesus
just woke her up.’ And you understand how much of a test that was going to
be to Jairus that his faith would be rooted and grounded in the person of Jesus
Christ–no matter what people said, no matter what accusations they would make.

He would recall how Jesus had
uttered those words, “Talitha kum! (Little girl arise).” Actually,
they’re the words that her mother would have said to a little girl in the
morning when she went in and she was asleep in bed. She would say, “Talitha kum,”
you know, “Little girl, get up.” No histrionics, no holy water, no “Hail
Mary’s,” no “Let me bring out some of my teeth or hair or this little pouch that
contains something of the dead,” no hocus pocus–Just a word, just a sovereign
word from Jesus and she gets up and He says to her…oh, He says to her the most
extraordinary thing…well, at least to the parents, “Give her something to
eat.” It’s so homespun, isn’t it? It’s so down to earth. “Give her
something to eat.” And they’re amazed. They are totally, completely
amazed, as you would be.

In Revelation 1:17-18 there is a
text, “Do not be afraid; I am the first and the last, and the living One; and
I was dead, and behold, I am alive forevermore, and I have the keys of death and
of Hades.” Andrew Bonner tells of a lady he was speaking to who said after
citing those words, “If Jesus has the keys to death and Hades, the first thing
that I will see when I walk through that door, is Jesus. If He’s got the keys,
when I walk through that door, He’s the first person I’ll see.” That’s why this
story is here, to encourage you, to bring joy and faith and hope into your
hearts, to give you courage and shed this hope abroad in your soul. For the
first hand that you’ll see, the first hand that you’ll take hold of, the first
voice that you’ll hear on the other side of death–will be His…This sovereign,
omnipotent, powerful Lord Jesus Christ who sometimes ignores our faith and grows
our faith and tests our faith. Amen. Let’s pray together.

Father, we thank You for this
word, the beautiful, beautiful story. Grow our faith as we discern on so many
occasions that indeed you are testing our faith, and sometimes it seems to us, O
Lord, wrongly that you are ignoring us. Help us to turn our eyes upon Jesus and
to look full in His wonderful face that the things of earth may grow strangely
dim in the light of His glory and grace. Hear us Lord, for Jesus’ sake. Amen.

Please stand and receive the
Lord’s benediction. Grace, mercy, and peace from God our Father and the Lord
Jesus Christ be with you all. Amen.