Two Characters: Jairus and the Woman
Our sermon scripture reading this morning comes from Luke chapter 8, verses 40 through 56.
Now when Jesus returned, the crowd welcomed him, for they were all waiting for him.
And there came a man, Jairus, who was a ruler of the synagogue. And falling at Jesus' feet, he implored him to come to his house, for he had an only daughter, about 12 years of age, and she was dying.
As Jesus went, the people pressed around him. And there was a woman who had a discharge of blood for 12 years. And though she had spent all her living on physicians, she could not be healed by anyone. She came up behind him and touched the fringe of his garment, and immediately her discharge of blood ceased.
And Jesus said, "Who was it that touched me?" When all denied it, Peter said, "Master, the crowds surround you and are pressing in on you." But Jesus said, "Someone touched me, for I perceive that power has gone out from me."
And when the woman saw that she was not hidden, she came trembling and falling down before him, declared in the presence of all the people why she had touched him and how she had been immediately healed. And he said to her, "Daughter, your faith has made you well. Go in peace."
While he was still speaking, someone from the ruler's house came and said, "Your daughter is dead. Do not trouble the teacher anymore." But Jesus on hearing this answered him, "Do not fear, only believe, and she will be well."
And when he came to the house, he allowed no one to enter with him except Peter and James and John and the father and mother of the child. And all were weeping and mourning for her. But he said, "Do not weep, for she is not dead, but sleeping." And they laughed at him, knowing that she was dead.
But taking her by the hand, he called, saying, "Child, arise." Her spirit returned, and she got up at once and rose, and he directed that something should be given her to eat. And her parents were amazed, but he charged them to tell no one what had happened.
This is the word of the Lord. Join with me in prayer.
Father, we come here this morning not at our own initiative, but at your initiative. You're the God who created all things, who created us. Who placed us where we lived at the time in which we lived by your sovereign hand. So, God, we bring all praise and honor and glory to you.
God, you know each and every one of us. You know the situations of our lives. You know every detail of what is going on. You know every worry. You know every grief. You know every joy. You know every sorrow. God, you know what we're stressed out about. You know what we don't have answers to. You know our prayers and you hear us.
God, you see us. And so help us to pray this morning like we just sung that we will hope in God. That no matter what comes, we will say to ourselves, "Why are you cast down, my soul? Hope in God. I will again praise him."
God, help us to see this morning in the text, in the lives of these two individuals who you radically changed their lives. Let us see your glory and your goodness. Let us see your tenderness and compassion. Let us see your power and your presence. Let us worship you and believe. It's in Christ's name that we pray all these things. Amen. Amen.
Well, this weekend is Memorial Day weekend. It's a day when we pause to remember the men and the women who have given their lives in service to our country. We remember their sacrifice, we remember their courage, we remember them, we honor them, and we remember and pray for their loved ones.
When we lived in France a few years ago, we had the incredible opportunity of visiting Normandy on the 80th anniversary of D-Day. And as I stood there on Omaha Beach, I looked out over the water and I tried to imagine what it was like in the dark hours before dawn that morning, 80 years before, on June 6, 1944.
Take a moment and imagine it with me. Thousands of young American soldiers, many of them just teenagers, packed shoulder to shoulder in Higgins boats, crossing a rough, dark sea toward the coast of France. Nobody is talking much. The engines are loud. Men are getting seasick, and every single one of them knows exactly what is about to happen. In just a few moments, those steel doors at the front of the boat are going to drop open. And when they do, machine gun fire will meet them instantly.
Some of these boys are just 18 years old. Imagine that kind of waiting, wondering if they would survive the morning. When we were there, I found out about one of those men who landed that day. He was a 23-year-old farm boy from Alabama named Arnold Ray Lambert. Ray was not a famous general. Ray wasn't even carrying a rifle. He was an Army medic. But at that point in the war, he had already fought through North Africa and Sicily with the legendary Big Red One. He had already earned multiple Purple Hearts and Silver Stars for running into enemy fire to rescue wounded soldiers.
He had even been offered a promotion to officer and he turned it down. Why? Because he said, "I did not want to leave my men."
So on the morning of D-Day, Ray and also his younger brother Bill, also a medic, were packed into a landing craft with 31 soldiers heading toward Omaha Beach on the very first wave of the invasion. The doors dropped, and the soldiers stepped into chest-deep water under withering machine gun fire. Those men were carrying nearly 90 pounds of gear. Some drowned before they even reached the shore. In the opening minutes, some estimates say that certain frontline companies suffered 90% casualties.
Lambert later would describe the sound of battle as something beyond noise. He would say it pounds your bones. Your skull vibrates. You feel it inside of you. But in the middle of all of that chaos, the medic from Alabama went to work. Again and again, Ray Lambert ran back into the water, dragging drowning men out from the water. He would bandage wounds while bullets snapped past his head.
At one point, he spotted a broken chunk of German concrete on the beach about four feet high. He later called it "my salvation." Here's a picture of that rock. We have it. It's now called Ray's Rock, marking the place where he set up one of the very first medic stations and casualty checkpoints on Omaha Beach.
Lambert helped save as many men as he could that day. He kept going until he couldn't. He was shot through the arm. Shrapnel ripped open his leg. He administered morphine to others and even to himself so he could keep helping others. But then finally, while trying to help a wounded soldier out of the surf, the steel ramp of a landing craft crashed down on him, breaking his back and driving him under the water. He was evacuated to a ship, unconscious and barely alive.
Why don't you just picture yourself on that day 80 years ago? Imagine the desperate waiting of that day. Wounded men waiting to be dragged to safety by a medic. And once they were behind that rock, injured, bleeding, waiting for a medic to tend to their wounds before it was too late. Imagine other men maybe further down the beach, pinned down under gunfire, unable to move forward, unable to go back, waiting for reinforcements that they felt like would never come, waiting for help, for relief.
Then imagine back home across the Atlantic, mothers waiting. Women who had sent their sons over an ocean and have not heard anything since, sitting by the radio, wondering if the son they had raised was still alive. D-Day was a day filled with desperate waiting.
Ray Lambert woke up in a field hospital in England. He looked over in the bed next to him. Surprisingly, it was his brother Bill, also badly wounded. Bill looked at him and asked, "What are you doing here?" Ray said, "Same thing as you." And then Bill asked, "What's mother going to think?" Their mother got to welcome them home. Many other mothers didn't get that privilege. Only seven of the 31 men in his landing craft made it off that beach. In total, 2,501 American soldiers were killed on D-Day.
What Ray Lambert and other medics did that day was an extraordinary display of human courage and human love. But no matter how brave and how skilled those medics were, they could only do so much. Lambert could drag men from the water. He could slow the bleeding. He could ease the pain. But he could not get every wounded soldier behind that rock. He could not heal. He could not raise the dead.
Let me show you another picture. It's next in the slide. Row after row after row of white crosses marking the nearly 9,400 graves of American military personnel buried at the Normandy American Cemetery. Ray Lambert got to live another 77 years after D-Day. He went back and visited Normandy often, but he too would one day die. In 2021, at the age of 100, he passed away.
While we were there in Normandy, they had flown out 41 veterans of the Normandy Campaign, 33 of which served on D-Day, and all of them are either over or approaching 100 years old. Here's a picture of one of them that we met at the cemetery. We flew back to the States shortly after our trip to Normandy, and there were several of these World War II veterans on our flight back. They got a well-deserved hero's welcome on the plane. It was wonderful to see them and to meet them. But in just a few years, even the strongest of survivors from that day on Omaha Beach will soon give way to death.
I tell you this story because we live in a fallen and broken world. It's not a surprise to you. You all know that. We live with the consequences of sickness and death all around us. We live in a world of desperate waiting. What we commemorate this weekend is a good reminder of that.
This is the same world that Luke 8 is set in, a world of sickness and death in which humanity has no cure or remedy, but in this passage, we encounter one to whom even sickness and death submit. Here's the main point I want us to see this morning: All those who desperately wait with faith will receive the power and person of the God-man, Jesus Christ. We should have a slide that says that. I'll say it again one more time: All those who desperately wait with faith will receive the power and person of the God-man, Jesus Christ.
We're going to walk through that sentence phrase by phrase this morning. So first, I want you to see "all those." All those. I want to introduce you to the surrounding and supporting characters of the story, and I want you to notice the contrast and distinction that Luke makes for us between these two individuals.
First, we meet a man named Jairus. Jairus was a ruler of the synagogue. He would have been responsible for the administration of the synagogue, things like organizing services, appointing teachers, readers, those who prayed, and he would just supervise all the activities of the synagogue. This was a high position in that town and in that day. He was a man with social standing. He was a leader in the city. He was a well-respected man, one of the most respected figures in the Jewish community. That's character one.
Then we meet a woman, and we don't even learn her name. We find out that this unnamed woman had had a discharge of blood for 12 years. If you go and read Leviticus chapter 1 or Numbers chapter 5, you will find out that this made her ceremonially unclean continually. As a Jewish woman, for 12 whole years, she not only suffered physically immense pain and distress from her medical condition, but also, she was cut off socially and religiously. She could not physically touch anyone, for if she did, that would make them unclean. She could not attend worship. She could not go to the synagogue or to the temple.
So these are our two characters. Do you see the contrast and the distinction between Jairus and the woman that Luke wants us to see? You cannot meet two more different people. One leads the synagogue, one has been excluded from it. One is publicly honored, and one is publicly avoided. Okay, now that we've seen the contrast, let's see what these two individuals have in common.
The Desperation of Waiting
Second, who desperately wait. As we see in this passage, it doesn't matter where you are in the social order. Sickness and death do not discriminate. We live in a fallen and broken world. Sickness and death come for all.
Jairus' high social position makes his desperation even more apparent. Look at what he does in verse 41. It says he falls at Jesus' feet and implores him to come to his house. Now, that's a surprising thing to read. This is not how respectable men of this day act. A man of his standing was not expected to bow down before anyone, especially such a controversial figure as Jesus. This man is in the same class as Pharisees, and as we've read through this gospel, the Pharisees are no fans of Jesus. So to do something like this threatened his standing within the community.
Why would he do this? We keep reading in verse 41. For he had an only daughter, about 12 years of age, and she was dying. Oh, what desperation. This is the worst scenario any parent can imagine. His child is about to die, and there's nothing he can do about it. This little girl he raised, his only child, 12 years old, at that time and in that culture, considered on the brink of womanhood, about to enter into the prime of her life. She was dying.
He was so desperate, he was willing to do anything. He didn't care about his social status. He didn't care what other people thought about him. He was desperate enough to leave his dying daughter because while she still lived, there was some hope. Maybe, just maybe, Jesus can help. Maybe Jesus can help. He might be mocked and rejected by his peers, but he did not care.
So what does he do? He goes to the lake and he waits. We read in verse 40 that the same crowd from earlier in the chapter is waiting for Jesus to return from the other side of the lake. So they were on the Jewish side. Jesus had visited and gone to the Gentile side. And they don't know when he's coming back, but Jairus is there waiting in the crowd. He seems to be the very first in line. We have no idea how long he was there, but we know that every moment for him was precious. His daughter, his only daughter, was running out of time.
And then as you read the narrative, finally Jesus returns. Jesus meets him. He hears his desperate plea for help, and he's going to go with him. There's hope. But as we keep reading, there's an interruption. Luke introduces our other character and we see her desperate waiting. The same year that Jairus' little girl was born, her life changed forever. The best day of Jairus' life was the worst day of hers. For as long as that precious daughter had been alive, she had been bleeding. She had been unclean for 12 years. Shame, distance, separation, suffering, pain. She couldn't touch anyone, and no one had touched her for 12 years.
Take a moment and just consider what that might have been like. I don't think we can fully imagine it, but you remember those first few weeks, a few years ago during COVID, when we didn't really know what was happening and social distancing was put in full effect? People had to go into the hospital sick and alone. Wives separated from their husbands, mothers from their children. That was just a few weeks for us. Can you imagine 12 years of that? No hugs, no physical touch with another human being. She could not hug her husband, no embrace from her children, no embrace of family and friends, no contact with another human being. She was cut off socially.
She was also cut off religiously from worship. We read in the Old Testament that the rules and regulations about those who are unclean, she could not gather with God's people. She had to be outside of the camp. She could not go to the temple. She could not go to the synagogue. She could not approach God in public worship. 12 years of this. 12 years of waiting. Consider her desperation.
Luke tells us in verse 43 that though she had spent all her living on physicians, she could not be healed by anyone. We read she tried everything. She tried everything. When we think of physicians today, we think of nice modern doctors and nice modern hospitals. That's not the scenario we read here. These were primitive doctors of the first century. Now, Luke, who is writing this narrative, was himself a medical doctor. So there were respectable doctors who practiced basic pre-modern medicine, but there were also quacks who gave ridiculous remedies and treatments that were painful and ended up causing more harm. And it sounded like she tried it all. She was desperate, so she would do anything. But although she had spent all she had to find a cure, Mark's account tells us in Mark 5:26 that she was no better, but rather grew worse. Like Jairus, this woman saw Jesus as her only hope.
She became so desperate that, as an unclean person who was supposed to avoid all the crowds by law, she crawled through a crushing crowd just to try to touch the hem of Jesus' garment. She approached him from behind because she didn't want any attention on her, but she ends up having a life-changing encounter with Jesus. We'll get back to that.
Before we do, let's get back to Jairus. Can you imagine the inner turmoil and anxiety of Jairus during this interaction that Jesus is having with the woman? He had already been waiting for who knows how long by the lake for Jesus to return. He had already humbled himself. He had bowed down. He implored Jesus to come with him. He had been fighting through this crowd to get back home as quickly as possible when suddenly Jesus stops and wants to know who had touched him in the sea of people who were pressing in on him.
And the text doesn't tell us what Jairus is thinking or feeling, but it's not hard to imagine, right? His daughter, his only daughter, is about to die. Every minute is costly. I'm sure he's thinking, "We need to go. We need to hurry. We need to get there before it's too late."
Then, just as Jesus' interaction with a woman seems to be ending, verse 49, the worst possible news comes. Luke 8:49. Look at it with me. While Jesus was still speaking, someone from the ruler's house came and said, "Your daughter is dead. Do not trouble the teacher anymore."
This interruption had cost Jairus his daughter's life. Why? Commentator Daryl Bach writes this helpfully. He says, "The delay caused by the healing woman's hemorrhage appears to have been costly. As Jesus finishes addressing the woman, a man appears from the synagogue leader's home with bad news. The daughter has died. In stopping to heal a lesser medical condition and forcing a discussion about it, Jesus had allowed a life to be lost."
Where are God's justice and Jesus' judgment in this turn of events? Just sit with that for a moment. Can you feel that sense of injustice? Jairus had done everything right, and yet everything was going all wrong. Have you ever felt like that in your life?
Commentator Daryl Bach goes on to say, "One can imagine how a desperate yet hopeful Jairus becomes disappointed and grief-stricken. Frustration mixed with anger may have resulted at this seemingly lost opportunity." I can imagine that.
Here's what I want you to see. Some of the hardest seasons in the Christian life are not seasons of open rebellion. They're seasons of confused, anguished waiting. When it seems to us as if God is late.
Waiting with Faith
When it seems to us as if God is silent, when you cannot for the life of you figure out what he is doing. We don't know all the emotions Jairus began to feel, but we do know that he started to fear. And that brings us to the next section of our phrase: "With faith."
With faith. Before we address Jesus' fear, let's go back to the beginning of the story and commend his original faith. Jairus had faith to go to Jesus in the first place. He had faith that Jesus could heal his daughter when no one else could. We read the words that Jairus says to Jesus in Mark's account, Mark 5:23. He says, "My little daughter is at the point of death. Come and lay your hands on her so that she may be made well and live."
That's a strong faith. Saying, "Jesus, I believe, please, I believe you can heal my daughter. She's at the point of death. There's nothing anyone else can do except you. You can heal her. All you have to do is touch her and she will be made well and live." That's a commendable faith.
We have the benefit, of course, of reading Luke's historical narrative that Jairus did not have. We know just a chapter earlier that a Roman centurion had faith that Jesus could heal a servant from a distance, that Jesus' power was not limited to what he could touch. We also have the story of the widow and her only son that Jesus raised from the dead. Maybe Jairus hadn't heard these stories. Maybe those options didn't occur to him. What he knew was that his only daughter was dying, and he believed that Jesus could help. That's Jairus' faith.
The woman had a strong faith as well. We read in Mark's account, Mark 5:27-28. It says, "She had heard the reports about Jesus and came up behind him in the crowd and touched his garment. For she said, 'If I touch even his garments, I will be made well.'" So her faith is strong too. Her faith begins with hearing. Faith comes by hearing. She believed what she heard about Jesus.
Some have speculated that maybe this was just a superstitious faith. But as we read the narrative, there's no condemnation of her faith in the text. Maybe it was an imperfect faith, but this imperfect faith is honored because at its center, she trusts that Jesus can do what no one else can do. Commentator Walter Leafield notes that the smoldering wick of her faith is fanned into flame by Jesus' action. And then we read that Jesus commends her faith explicitly in the narrative. Luke 8:48, Jesus says, "Daughter, your faith has made you well. Go in peace."
Back to Jairus for a moment. As soon as Jesus speaks these words of commendation and comfort and blessing to the woman, Jairus is having a total crisis of faith. He had believed that Jesus could heal his daughter if he could get there in time. His daughter had hope while she still lived, but now she was dead, and death has a finality to it. Maybe his faith too was an imperfect faith, but it was an imperfect faith in the right person.
What does Jesus say to Jairus in verse 50? It says, "Do not fear, only believe and she will be well." Expositor D. Ralph Davis puts it this way. He says, "It's as if Jesus in verse 50 is saying to Jairus, You trusted me in what was urgent. Now trust me in what seems hopeless. You trusted me in what was alarming. Now trust me in what seems irreversible. You thought I was adequate for that situation, but what about this one? Can you believe that I am adequate for this very different, much more difficult situation?"
Oh, what a question to all of us who are so prone to fear. There is more to Jesus than Jairus could imagine.
Receiving the Power of Jesus
Hear the words of Jesus today as a comfort to your soul. Do not fear. Only believe. That brings us to the next part of our phrase: "Will receive the power."
Let's walk through the narrative together to see the power of Jesus in these two miracles over sickness and death. And remember, last week, Pastor Nathan covered the two stories before our section where Jesus demonstrated his power over nature and demons. So in this chapter, Luke wants his audience to see that Jesus has comprehensive power over nature, over demons, over sickness, and even death itself.
Let's set the scene again. There's this huge crowd who's been waiting for Jesus to return from the other side of the lake. Jesus meets Jairus, agrees to go with him, and now they have to make their way through this crowd. Luke notes that the people pressed around him in verse 42. And that word there for "press," interestingly, is the same word that Luke uses earlier in the chapter in Luke 8:14 for the thorns choking the word in the parable of the sower. And then in verse 45, in Peter's reply, the verbs used for the crowd pressing in are used elsewhere for holding prisoners in a siege or even pressing grapes.
So that's the image we have here. The crowd was physically crushing Jesus. They were choking him. When we lived in Paris, we didn't have a car, and so we got really used to public transport. We got really good at riding trains and buses. A family of six with small children, so we always had to be extra diligent in crowds. And one time of day that we did not particularly like riding the train was downtown during rush hour. Maybe you can imagine if you've been in a global city like that. On the occasions where we did, I would use that same word to describe it. We felt crushed. There's people everywhere. They're cramming into each car. You're touching everyone around you. There's absolutely no space between you and the next person.
And do you know who thrives in those situations? Pickpockets. Paris is famous for pickpockets. When you're being touched on all sides, you don't notice one extra touch until much later, when you realize your phone or your wallet is gone. That's a little bit like this scenario here, except instead of a phone or wallet, Jesus notices that power had gone out from him.
Look at verse 44 again with me. It says the woman came up behind him and touched the fringe of his garment, and immediately her discharge of blood ceased. Again, the woman approached from behind. She was trying to avoid any public interaction. She was trying to be as inconspicuous as possible. She did not want to draw attention to herself. She was used to hiding for 12 years. But if you think about it, if the crowds were crushing in that much on Jesus, she must have had to fight through that crowd, causing everyone she touched to be unclean. And remember, she's trying to get to the fringe of his garment, which had been on the ground. So she's crawling on the ground through a crushing crowd. Her faith had led her to go against all social standards, risk being ostracized even more, and literally be trampled to reach Jesus.
And what happens next? The moment she touched Jesus, everything changed at once. Physically, the bleeding stopped. More than just physically, every dimension of her suffering was changed. Socially, she could touch and be touched again. Spiritually, she was ceremonially clean. All of it reversed in one moment.
Now, here's a detail I don't want you to miss. This woman was unclean, right? And according to the law, when an unclean person touches someone, the uncleanness transfers to that person who's been touched. So the crowd, if they had known who she was, would have scattered. And yet, when she touches Jesus, instead of the uncleanness transferring to him, what happens? His cleanness transfers to her. Instead of Jesus being defiled, the woman becomes clean. His power and purity were greater than her uncleanness.
Let's jump ahead to Jairus' daughter, verses 51 to 56. It says that Jesus arrived at Jairus' house. We don't know how long that journey was, but the funeral procession had already started. The mourners are there. And I want you to understand this is nothing like our funerals. Our funerals here are very quiet, right? Hushed voices, soft music. A first-century Jewish funeral, sorry, was just the opposite. Households would hire professional mourning women wailing at full voice, tearing their garments. Flute players filling the air with noise, not even music, just noise. Even the poorest family, according to the law, was expected to provide at least two flute players and one wailing woman. But for the household of a synagogue ruler, it would have been considerably more.
Now Jesus would have a word for these fake mourners, but I want you to consider here in this moment the true mourning that comes along with the death of a loved one, especially the death of a child. I remember when I served as an intern here many years ago, we had a call from North Fulton Hospital.
The young woman was dying unexpectedly. Her family was from out of town, so they had no one. So the hospital called around asking for a pastor to come and visit with them. As the intern, I got to tag along with one of the pastors as an educational experience.
I remember walking into that hospital visitation room that day and encountering true, unfiltered grief. The father's cries in particular were uncontrollable. This wasn't a performative grief; it just poured out of him. He kept trying to leave the visitation room and go out into the hallway, and the nurses kept trying to guide him back into the room, but his wails just filled the hospital.
That's what Jairus' house sounded like. But Jesus walks in and says, "Stop weeping. She's not dead. She's sleeping." And what do they do? These are professional mourners. They're not actually grieving. They laughed at him. Their performance turned into mockery. They knew what being dead looked like; they didn't get that wrong. These were professionals.
But as we see, when Jesus said she was sleeping, he was not claiming that she was in a coma. He knows that she's dead. What he's saying is that death is not final. It's temporary. To Jesus, death is just like sleep. For Jesus, it's no harder to wake a sleeping child up from a nap than it is to raise a child from the dead.
He takes Peter and James, his John, his inner three. He takes the girl's parents, who were certainly not laughing, and he goes to the room where she is. He takes her by the hand. Now, just like with the unclean woman, touching a dead body made a person ceremonially unclean for seven days under the law, but Jesus does it anyway. And the same thing that happened with the woman happens here. Instead of Jesus becoming defiled by contact with death, life and power flow the opposite direction.
He speaks to the girl just as if he's waking her up in the morning. He says, "Child, arise" (verse 55), and her spirit returned. And she got up at once.
All right, so we've seen Jesus' power over sickness, and now we've seen his power over death. Who is this man to whom even sickness and death submit? Bach notes this again. He says, "When one considers the four miracles of chapter eight, it is Jesus' comprehensive power that stands out. This power provides the opportunity for people to see God. Such power exposes the impotency of the forces that oppose God and humanity. The forces may be natural, demonic, disease, or death. Yet Jesus is able to reverse them all."
The last miracle of resurrection properly comes at the end. For if Jesus has power over death, then one must eventually deal with him and with God. The call in the three of these miracles relates to faith. Jesus is worthy of one's trust. Be assured that what he promises, he will eventually.
The Person of the God-man
Do. Know that God's power is absolute. Death is not the chief end of humans. Facing and knowing God is. That brings us to the final part of our phrase and the person of the God-man, Jesus Christ. Let's read that phrase together: "All those who desperately wait with faith will receive the power and person of the God-man, Jesus Christ."
The focus of Jesus' ministry was not on all the miraculous signs and wonders that he could do; it's on who he was. The signs and wonders validated that what he said about himself was true. This is the reason why in verse 56, Jesus surprisingly tells the girl's amazed parents to do what? Tell no one what had happened. That doesn't make any sense. Why would he do that?
Well, one reason simply is just crowd control. In this Jewish region, Jesus was concerned that mistaken expectations about a political and revolutionary Messiah could make his ministry more difficult than it needed to be. But there was another reason. Jesus knows that he is headed for a different kind of ministry than people will want from him. Excessive focus on his works of power will undermine the type of commitment he will ask from people. One commentator notes, he does not need to be raising people on a daily basis. The type of commitment that will be required of them, should they follow him, is one of suffering, not comfort.
This large crowd that is following Jesus, they're only interested in miracles. In just a few chapters in Luke chapter 11, verse 29, it says, "When the crowds were increasing, he began to say, This generation is an evil generation. It seeks for a sign, but no sign will be given except the sign of Jonah." It's easy to follow someone who you think can provide everything that you want. But Jesus did not come to be just a spiritual power vending machine. He did not come to perform for those who seek a sign. He came to seek and to save the lost. He came to die on a cross, to be raised from the dead three days later, and then to call on all who want to follow him to deny themselves, to take up their cross, and to follow him.
The kind of commitment he will call people to is not comfort seeking. It's suffering. It's self-denial. And these miracles show that he is worthy to be followed. The miracles are signs. They are proofs. They are not the destination. They are not the end. Jesus is the destination.
So who is this Jesus? Let's look at the person of Jesus together. Jesus is tender and compassionate. Look at his interactions in this passage, especially how he treats the woman and the child with this woman—unnamed, unclean. After she sneaks up on him and then tries to hide from him, after she comes trembling before him, terrified and tells everyone the whole truth, he's tender and compassionate towards this woman. He heals her of her disease. He calls her daughter, commends her faith, and tells her to go in peace.
A quick note on Jesus' words there. That phrase, "Your faith has made you well." That word for "made you well" is the Greek word *sozo*, which could be translated, "Your faith has saved you." It's the same word. This word can either mean heal or save, but here it seems to mean both. Both physical healing and spiritual salvation have taken place. Her faith has made her well. Her faith has saved her. Physical healing and spiritual salvation in the same word, in the same moment.
And then remember how Jesus treats that little girl. He clears the room. He takes her hand and he says to her—we read the word, the Aramaic that he used is in Mark, which would have been her native language—*Talitha Koumi*, which literally means, "Little lamb, arise." Little lamb. A term of endearment for little children. Jesus was so tender. He was so kind. And he makes sure after she is raised from the dead, what's the first thing he does? He makes sure she gets something to eat. He makes sure she's fed, that she's cared for. This was to show that she had truly been raised from the dead. She wasn't just a ghost that appeared to be raised. She was a living, breathing little girl who needed to be fed and cared for.
Jesus is tender and compassionate. Jesus is also interruptible. We see in this story he gets interrupted multiple times. He gets off that boat and immediately goes with Jairus. He stops everything in the middle of this urgent mission to be interrupted by the unnamed woman. Jesus in his ministry was always being interrupted, and he turned every interruption into something unforgettable.
Jesus is also unbotherable. I don't know if that's a word, but I like it. When the messenger arrives from Jairus' house and says, "Do not trouble the teacher anymore," there's an assumption behind those words. The only reason that you would think approaching Jesus is a trouble or a bother is if you thought he was too busy to care about you.
Honestly, I think sometimes we carry that same assumption and we dress it up in humble language, saying something like, "Well, God has much bigger things to deal with. I don't want to waste his time on something so small." That sounds noble, but it's actually very belittling of God. It implies that God is overworked, that he's overwhelmed, and he's got too many things on his plate. Maybe we think of God like he's our dad at work and we're not allowed to call him because he's got more important things going on than to deal with our little problems. When we think that way, our problem is that we too often think that God is like us.
When I was in seminary, I worked at a customer service call center. Good training for ministry. This was for a moving company. And during summer, which is peak moving season, we would log in and we would see an overwhelming queue of calls. Now, no one in a customer service line is calling because they're happy about something, and they're especially not happy after they've been sitting on hold for hours and hours. Some of those calls were simple because, for example, they would call early enough to schedule their container pickups and deliveries before our calendar was totally booked. But others would call and they would make impossible requests. They thought we could move around everything so we could accommodate their schedule. We really did have limited capacity and limited power. We could not fix much of what people were calling about, even if we genuinely wanted to help them. If something was out of our control, it was out of our control.
Aren't you glad that Jesus is not an overwhelmed customer service agent? When Jairus falls at his feet, Jesus doesn't sigh and hope someone else takes the call. He doesn't say, "Your wait time is approximately four hours." He loves that call. He's never too busy. He's never too tired. He's never too caught up in something so important that he won't stop for you. Jesus has no limits like we do. And this is all true because he is truly God and truly man.
I want to pause for a moment and wonder at the incarnation with you. Let's back up and look at verses 45 and 46 again. And Jesus said, "Who was it that touched me?" When all denied it, Peter said, "Master, the crowds surround you and are pressing in on you." But Jesus said, "Someone touched me, for I perceive that power has gone out from me." Now, I don't know what it feels like for power to go out from you, but I bet it's more noticeable than getting your phone or wallet stolen. He looks around and asks, "Who touched me?" Now, no one knew what had happened at that point except for the woman. It would be like me turning around on that train in Paris and asking that same question. Everyone looks at me like, "We're all touching you."
Everyone in the crowd denied it. Then good old Peter, good old Peter, he spoke up, always ready to correct Jesus when he needed correcting, right? And he says, what we're all thinking, "Everyone's touching you. What do you mean, 'Who touched me'?" But Jesus says, "No, no, someone touched me. For I perceive that power has gone out from me."
Here in this text, I think we get a fascinating glimpse into what is called the hypostatic union: that Jesus Christ is fully God and he is fully man. Truly God and truly man. He's not 50-50. He's not just God pretending to be a man, just appearing like a man. He's not just a man pretending to be God. He is God in the flesh. So he has both a divine nature and a human nature. Now, I have to warn you, we're going to theology and we're not here for just a second. Some of you will love this. Some might hate it. Most of you will tolerate it, which I appreciate. Thank you for bearing with me.
The question here that we're asking is, did Jesus really not know who touched him? Some would say, of course he knew. He's not looking for information here. He's looking for an encounter with this woman. He's looking for a relationship. He's looking to draw the woman out. He's doing the same thing he did with the woman at the well at John 4 when he asked her, "Where is your husband?" And he already knows the answer to that question. I think that explanation is totally possible and plausible. God is omniscient. God knows all things. God does not need us to give him any information. Just like he wasn't looking for information when he asked Adam and Eve where they were or when he asked Elijah what he was doing. God has never learned anything. If he did, he wouldn't be God. The famous preacher Adrian Rogers used to ask, "Has it ever occurred to you that nothing ever occurs to God?" So, yeah, I think that it's totally possible, totally plausible.
But also, I think it could be true—I want you to stay with me for a moment—that according to his deity, Jesus, God the Son, the second person of the Trinity, knew who touched him. The Chalcedonian Creed, a historic church creed on the incarnation, states this. It says, "He is of the same essence as the Father according to his deity." So, God the Son is always omniscient and omnipresent. He can't just turn it off; he's always everywhere, he always knows everything.
And at the same time, stick with me, it's also possible to say that according to his humanity, we're using creedal language here, according to his humanity, he did not know who touched him. Stay with me. Chalcedonian Creed continues: "he is of the same essence as the Father according to his deity, and the same one is of the same essence with us according to our humanity, according to our humanity like us in all things except sin."
Now we read that this is true already in Luke, right? Luke 2:52 says that Jesus increased in wisdom and in stature and in favor with God and man. What? Jesus grew, right? God cannot grow. God cannot get any bigger. He cannot get any stronger. He certainly can't get any wiser. He is already the fullness of all of his attributes. He cannot learn because he already knows all things.
But Jesus, according to his humanity, Luke says, grew in wisdom and stature. He got bigger. He learned things. He learned to walk. He learned to talk. When he was a baby, he wasn't just pretending he didn't know how to walk and talk. According to his humanity, he actually had to learn. He tripped and he fell as a toddler. He probably said "pisketti" instead of "spaghetti." He had to learn how to become a carpenter. He made mistakes, not sins, but human mistakes. He had to learn to measure twice and to cut once.
As we keep reading in the Gospels, we read that Jesus said there were things he didn't know. Consider Matthew 24:36 and Mark 13:32. Jesus says, "But concerning that day and hour, no one knows, not even the angels of heaven nor the Son, but the Father only." One commentator helps us out. He says, "in his incarnate life, Jesus learned things as other human beings learned them. On the other hand, Jesus was also fully God, and as God, he had infinite knowledge. Here he is apparently speaking in terms of his human nature."
This is similar to other statements about Jesus, which could be true of his human nature only and not of his divine nature. He grew and became strong, Luke 2:40. He increased in stature, Luke 2:52. He was about 30 years old, Luke 3:23. God does not have an age. He was weary, John 4:6. He was thirsty, John 19:28. He was hungry, Matthew 4:2. He was crucified, 1 Corinthians 2:8.
Taking account of these verses, together with many verses that affirm Christ's deity, the Council of Chalcedon in A.D. 451 affirmed that Christ was perfect in Godhead and also perfect in manhood, truly God and truly man. Okay, that ends our theology excursus. Thank you for bearing with me. If you want to dig more into that, you can go read the Chalcedonian Creed or you can read on the Incarnation by Athanasius. Jonathan will give you a copy.
The reason I bring that up is to emphasize our main point today: that all who desperately wait with faith will receive the power and the person of the God-man, Jesus Christ. Here's what I want you to see: God the Son, the second person of the Trinity, left glory. He condescended and took on flesh. The transcendent became imminent. Eternity stepped into time. God the Son became a man. Not in an abstract figurative sense, in a very real literal sense. He became a man who got hungry, who got tired, who suffered. Why? To be born for you. To live for you. To die for you. To be raised for you. To redeem you.
Philippians 2 says that Jesus Christ, who though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself. By becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore, God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name. So at the name of Jesus, every knee should bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.
Four Points of Application
Amen. Amen. All right, let's conclude with four points of application.
First, contemplate Jesus. Contemplate Jesus. Look at this Jesus. See this Jesus. See his power—his power over the physical realm of nature, his power over the spiritual realm of angels and demons, his power over sickness, his power over death itself. He is Lord. He is King. He is ruler. He is the Almighty One. He is mighty and he is sufficient. See this Jesus. See His person. Look at Him. Consider Him. Contemplate Him. He is tender and compassionate. He is interruptible. He is unbotherable. He wants a relationship with you. He cares for you. He loves you. He feeds you. He calls you His child. He is kind. He is gentle and lowly at heart.
Second, come to Jesus. Come to Jesus. Come, no matter who you are. The high and the lowly, the upright and the downtrodden, the happy and the depressed, the respected and the dishonored, the noble and the outcast, the rich and the poor, the weak and the strong, the old and the young, the religious and the unreligious. Anyone, all. Come, all who are desperate, all who have lost everything, who have spent everything, who have no hope, who are lost, who are lonely, who are grieving, who are hurting, who are humbled. Come, all you who wait. Who wait for all sorts of things, who wait for a spouse, who wait for a child, who wait for a job, who wait for a prodigal to return, who wait for an answer to prayer that they've been praying for years, who wait for someone to care for them, who wait for an illness to end, who wait for something they have absolutely no control over, who wait for a problem to be solved that no one can solve, who wait, along with all of creation, for a new heaven and a new earth. Come, all who are sick. Jesus is the great physician. Come, all who are dying. Jesus is the resurrection and the life. Come, all who are heavy laden, and he will give you rest. Come, ye sinners, poor and needy, weak and wounded, sick and sore. Jesus ready stands to save you, full of pity, love, and power. Come to Jesus.
Third, have confidence in Jesus. Have confidence in Jesus. Remember Jesus' words to the woman? He says, "Your faith has saved you. Go in peace." You are saved by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone. Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved. You will have a peace that surpasses all understanding. The chaos of your life will turn into peace, not necessarily because all of your circumstances change, but because you now know the Lord over all of your circumstances. Remember Jesus' words to Jairus. "Do not fear, only believe." All throughout scripture, when things are going most wrong, when God seems absent or late, that is precisely when he calls people to trust in him. Psalm 22, verses 4-5: "In you, our fathers trusted. They trusted and you delivered them. To you, they cried and were rescued. In you, they trusted and were not put to shame." Isaiah 26, 3 and 4: "You keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on you because he trusts in you. Trust in the Lord forever, for the Lord God is an everlasting rock." Isaiah 43, verse 2: "When you pass through the waters, I will be with you. And through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you. When you walk through fire, you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you." Isaiah does not say, "if." He says, "when." When. The season of desperate waiting is real. The fire is real. The flood is real. God has not promised to remove the fire. He's promised to be with you in the fire. And if you're in a season like that, know today that it will not be wasted. Maybe, just maybe, God will use your story, your waiting, your holding on, your trembling faith to inspire someone else. God wastes nothing. Someone watching you may someday say, "If Jesus was enough for them, then he is enough for me."
Martin Luther, one of the greatest theologians in the history of the church, watched his beloved daughter Magdalena die of the plague. She was barely 14 years old. He knelt beside her bed and he begged God to spare her. But she died. And when the carpenters were nailing down the lid of her coffin, Luther cried out, "Hammer away. One glorious day, she will rise again." That's the hope of a Christian. Not temporary healing, not temporary resuscitation, not temporary removal from difficult circumstances. That unnamed woman would one day get sick again and die. That little girl would one day grow old and die. But for the Christian, our hope is not in this life. It's in the life to come. It's in a future resurrection. We can say, "You can put me in the ground, but death is not the end. One glorious day, Jesus is going to say to me, 'Child, arise.'" He will cancel our death. We will rise because the one who holds our life in his hands, to him, death is like sleeping.
Call Others to Faith
Fourth and finally, call others to faith in Jesus. Look at verse 56 again. Jesus tells the parents to tell no one what had happened. When we read narrative texts like this, we're going to ask, we're supposed to ask, is this descriptive or prescriptive? Is the author just describing an event as it happened, or is he giving us a prescription, an instruction to follow today?
I can say to you with absolute certainty that this verse was descriptive. This instruction does not apply to us today. How do I know? Because we're reading it here today in public. Luke wrote it down. God intended it to be told throughout all generations. We are to read this passage, believe it, and then tell it to others.
We see that already in the book of Luke, in Luke 8:39, the verse directly before our passage. Jesus sent the healed demoniac home to declare how much God had done for him. In Luke 9:1, the verse directly after our passage, he sends his disciples out to proclaim the kingdom. In Luke 24, at the very end of the book, after the resurrection, Jesus commissions his followers to be witnesses to all nations.
We're not in a season of silence. We're in a season of proclamation. The world is full of people who are desperately waiting, people who don't know that they can receive the power and person of the God-man, Jesus Christ, by faith. It's our job to tell them. Go and declare how much God has done for you. Proclaim the kingdom of God.
It is written that Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead, and that repentance and a forgiveness of sin should be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning in Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things.
Let me close how we began this service with Isaiah verse 40, just the last few verses. Have you not known? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary. His understanding is unsearchable. He gives power to the faint, and to him who has no might, he increases strength. Even youth shall faint and weary, and young men shall fall exhausted. Here it is: But they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength. They shall mount up with wings like eagles. They shall run and not be weary. They shall walk and not faint. All those who desperately wait with faith will receive the power in the person of the God-man, Jesus Christ.
Close with me in prayer. Father, we thank you for your word this morning that gives life. Thank you for the story of the woman who was healed, the little girl who was raised to life. Thank you that we can see who Jesus is in this passion. We can see his power. We can see his glory. And we can see who he is. We can see his person. Thank you, Jesus, that you came to seek and to save that which is lost. Thank you that you have healed us of our diseases, cleansed us of our uncleanness, and raised us to life so that we could walk and follow you.
God, thank you that you are with us each and every moment. I pray for every situation in this room, if there are those who are waiting, desperately waiting, God, show them your power. Show them who you are. Let them see Jesus Christ as the God-man who loves them. In His name we pray. Amen.