Who Touched Me?

Who touched me? An intriguing question that Christ directed to the woman with the incurable disease. You'll notice as you study through the four Gospel accounts that Christ often asked questions in His teaching.

It's a very effective way to teach and Christ often raised questions. Questions that normally were rhetorical questions that He didn't necessarily expect an answer to. But this particular question in Mark chapter 5 and also in Luke chapter 8 was a question directed to one individual and he did expect an answer. Who touched me? And he wanted to know.

He actually did know, but he wanted the person who had been touched to respond to the question and to identify herself in this way. And so in many ways this question stands out above the other questions, the many other questions that we find raised by Jesus at various times. Some of you will remember many years ago when we had a Bible conference that was entirely based upon a series of questions that Jesus asked. Remember that?

John McKnight brought that series to us. Wonderful, wonderful study. But today we look at this question.

Who touched me? It actually is found in an intertwining of two accounts of healing. Both in Mark and in Luke you find the same thing. Jesus started out on a mission to heal the daughter of Jairus, but on the way He was interrupted by this woman with her desperate need. And He met that need and then continued on His way and that delay may have made the difference between the daughter of Jairus living to be healed of her disease or the daughter of Jairus dying, which seemed to be an impossible situation, but no it wasn't because Jesus raised her from the dead. What amazing power has Christ? And so these two miracles actually intertwined together. Two examples of Christ's power.

One an incurable disease and the other a resurrection from death. Two wonderful manifestations of faith, first by Jairus and then by this woman in our account for today. Two great examples of Christ's love and compassion. And we're going to look primarily at the second of these two this morning.

Let us examine it in three parts. First of all, an amazing Savior to look at the background. Secondly, a desperate seeker to consider this woman. And third, a competent counselor to see what Jesus said following the healing of this dear woman.

First of all, an amazing Savior and this is by way of background and I'm going to take more time with the setting of the situation in which we find our account today, because I think it's important for us to understand this panorama of Jesus early earthly ministry. It's important for us to understand something about that so that we can understand this woman's faith. What was it that she believed? What did she know? What had she heard about Christ that made it likely that she would seek him out in this way? Secondly, we need some of this background in order to understand the significance of this major interruption.

You can't help but read this account. You can't help when reading this account to notice that there was a very significant break in the intentions of Jesus to go heal the daughter of Jairus and then his delay in order to heal this poor woman. But both of these are great examples of Christ's loving compassion. But we start this account of Jesus' ministry working through some of the details that begin in chapter 4. We find him in the beginning as chapter 4 opens teaching the multitudes.

We have what we know elsewhere as the kingdom parables. Chapter 4 verse 1, and again he began to teach by the sea. And a great multitude was gathered to him so that he got into a boat and sat on it on the sea. And the whole multitude was on the land facing the sea.

And he taught them many things by parables and sent to them in his teaching. Behold a sower went forth to sow and onward through a number of those familiar kingdom parables. The sower and the soils.

The lampstand on its stand. The growth, the invisible growth of seed which only Mark talks about, an intriguing parable. Where the farmer goes out and scatters the seed and then he goes home and goes to sleep and pays no attention to what's taking place. And without his efforts that seed springs up. And he gets a crop. There's a lot to learn in that.

I don't have time for that right now. But it tells us something important about the work of God. We must do the part that is assigned to us, sowing the seed. We must rest quietly and confidently upon the part that God has taken upon himself to cause the growth of that seed.

To cause the fruit to be born upon those plants that are raised up. That's not our part. We're not supposed to try to make that happen.

We go to sleep and trust the Lord to make that happen. Oh, there's so much to learn there. But that's not our portion for today. But all of these parables that Jesus taught show us the power of the word of God. He was teaching the word, the word, the word. Some people look at the Ministry of Christ and they're most interested in the miracles, the miracles, the miracles. Well, they're important.

We're going to look at one this morning. But those miracles only reveal to us things that the word tells us about Jesus and tell us what to believe about him. The miracles point us to Christ, not to the excitement and phenomena of these miracles that Jesus is obviously able to do, but to the spiritual lessons which these miracles teach us, which we need to learn and employ in our lives. And so first, Christ is teaching the multitudes in Chapter four.

And then we see, secondly, Christ controlling the storm also in Chapter four. He'd been teaching on the west side of the shore of Galilee, the Jewish side. And he said to his disciples, come on, let's go over to the other side, the Gentile side. Gedera, as it's called. And while they were crossing the Sea of Galilee in a boat, I often think of a little rowboat, but it wasn't such a little one.

It had 13 people in it, so it had to be not a huge yacht, but still a pretty sizable boat as they were going across the sea. And Jesus lay down in the boat on a pillow, that little detail that's given to us in the Bible, lay down on a pillow, just like we would want to do, and went sound asleep, so sound asleep that when the storm arose, he wasn't even awakened by it. Sleeping, calmly, sleeping, he's tired. He's a man. He has a body.

He has a human nature. He needs to sleep. He needs to eat. He needs rest.

He needs the things we need. And he is sound asleep in the boat and the storm comes up and it's tossing the boat with such ferocity that the disciples are afraid for their lives. Seasoned fishermen who are accustomed to this lake and to the storms that come up upon it, but they are frightened for their lives and they come to Jesus and wake him up and say, Help, Lord, do something. And Jesus just says, Be still. And speaking to the wind and to the waves, this command, Be still.

Instantly, everything is calm. That is amazing. That is miraculous. That shows that this one not only has the power to proclaim the word, but he has the power to control nature, to still the wind and the waves because he made them and because he upholds them. You see the two natures of Jesus here? The one, the human nature, he must have his rest. He must sleep soundly. And the other nature, the divine nature that stands up and says to the storm, Stop!

And it stops just like that. Then we move into chapter five and we come to that familiar account of Jesus casting the demons out of the maniac of Gadara. A man who was beset by a legion, a multitude of demons. And he was in desperate condition and nobody was able to do anything for him or even to do anything with him. They couldn't contain him.

They couldn't control him. And Jesus spoke to the demons and said, Come out of him. They had to obey.

Now, we learn something about demons. If they are removed from one body, they seek another body. They seem to want to be in bodies. And so being expelled from the body of this man, they asked permission. They had to ask permission.

They were standing face to face with their Creator, with the God of the universe. They had to ask permission. They asked permission to go into the swine, the pigs. And Jesus gave them permission and they went and they went into this herd of swines and the pigs wouldn't have them and ran down the cliff and drowned themselves in the sea. Isn't that interesting? A man will abide demon possession.

The pigs weren't even willing to live in that condition. Do we learn anything there? I move on. But here is Jesus commanding not only nature, but commanding the demons. He has power over Satan.

He has power over the demons. But then we come to our account today, the intertwining of these two accounts, where Jesus relieves diseases. This request by a desperate father, Jairus, is the name that is given to him. This, by the way, is after Christ, of course, returned from the eastern side of the Sea of Galilee and came back to the Jewish side. And Jairus, we learn, is a ruler of the synagogue, presumably the one at Capernaum.

If you've been there, you've seen the ruins of that synagogue and they're rebuilding it so that we can see more of what it looked like. But Jairus, he's a prominent man. We know his name.

We know what he did. He was a ruler of the synagogue. We are surprised that this religious Jew, this religious Jewish leader, would come humbly to the Lord Jesus Christ because most of the religious leaders disdained Christ. They would not submit to Christ. They would not acknowledge his authority. They would not appeal to him for help.

But when people become desperate enough, they sometimes change their attitude. And this man had a 12-year-old daughter, apparently an only child, whom he loved dearly. And she was sick, desperately sick, deathly sick. And if something wasn't done soon, she was going to die. And so Jairus, the ruler of the synagogue, prominent man in that community, came humbly and requested of Jesus that he come and heal his daughter. And Jesus is glad to do so.

He's willing. And off he goes in the direction of the home of Jairus, probably one of the biggest, grandest mansions in that part of the country. But while he was on his way, something happened. And here came a desperate woman who had an incurable disease. Verse 25 says, Now a certain woman had a flow of blood for 12 years and had suffered many things from many physicians.

She had spent all that she had and was no better, but grew worse. Now we are introduced to a more ordinary person. First, we're introduced to a prominent individual, Jairus, ruler of the synagogue, well-known, influential, presumably wealthy.

Jesus goes to help him. Secondly, we are introduced to a woman, ordinary woman. Her name isn't important. Nobody pays it any attention anyway. Nobody really pays much attention to who she is. She's not prominent.

She's not influential. She's not wealthy. She's poor. She's lost all of the money that she had.

But she is in just as desperate condition as was Jairus, maybe even more so. And she had a long-standing affliction, this disease that had gone on year after year after year for 12 years. Jairus had had joy for 12 years in the joy of his 12-year-old daughter, and now he's in desperate condition. This woman has suffered for 12 long years. She's had no joy. She's had no comfort. She's had nothing but sorrow and affliction for 12 long years. And her condition was perplexing.

The medical community of that day was not able to help at all. It's interesting that Dr. Luke also records the same thing in chapter 8, as I mentioned. Dr. Luke is a doctor. He's called the beloved physician. He was a doctor, medical doctor, in that day.

He knew that there was no cure for this disease. Marvin Vinson, in his word studies in the New Testament, has a very, what should I say, interesting description of the medical cures for this condition in that particular time. He said, What she, this woman, may have suffered will appear from the prescription of the medical treatment of such complaint given in the Talmud.

And here it is. Take the gum of Alexandria, the weight of a suzi, a fractional silver coin, of alum the same, of crocus the same, let them be bruised together and given in wine to the woman that has an issue of blood. If this does not benefit, here take of Persian onions, three pints, boil them in wine and give it a drink and say, Arise from thy flux. If this does not cure her, set her in a place where two ways meet and let her hold a cup of wine in her right hand and let someone come behind and frighten her and say, Arise from thy flux. That might cure hiccups, but it doesn't cure, doesn't cure this disease, does it? But if that do no good, take a handful of cumin, a handful of crocus, a handful of fenugreek, and let them be boiled in wine and give them, her to drink and say, Arise from thy flux. If these do no good, and on it goes, I'm going to stop there, that's enough, you get the idea. The doctors of that day didn't have a clue what to do for this poor woman. All the things they suggested were just so much nonsense.

You say, well, that's the way it was 2,000 years ago. How many conditions do we have today that modern medicine with all of its science, with all of its pharmaceutical prescriptions, with all of its surgery, with all of its knowledge is unable to cure? Most of you know that my wife and I have a dear daughter who has a brain tumor, and there's not a whole lot that modern medicine is able to offer for her. We might as well try some of these cures that I just read from Marvin Vincent. Things that they'd be about as effective, I suppose, is what has been prescribed for her, and yet she's better. I can report to you that she's really been doing well the last two or three weeks, and we thank the Lord for that. But we know full well that if she's going to be cured, it's not going to be because of the brilliance of modern medicine.

It's going to be because of the power of a gracious God, and that's true in so many cases. Yes, we've made a lot of advances in 2,000 years, but yes, we still don't know how to cure a lot of things in our day. And this poor woman had been desperate, gone from doctor to doctor, 12 years in this condition, no human cure, spent everything she had on the doctors until she had nothing left, and she was no better off than she was before, was actually worse. Doesn't your heart go out to this poor woman?

This incurable disease, yes, meets a miraculous cure. We read in verse 27, she heard about Jesus. She came behind Him in the crowd and touched His garment, for she said, If only I may touch His clothes, I shall be made well. She heard about Jesus because He was prominent. I just went through a number of events in the life of Jesus prior to this account. He'd been teaching multitudes publicly. He'd been casting out demons publicly.

He had been displaying His miraculous power publicly. So it's not surprising that she heard about Jesus. We don't know exactly how she heard. We don't know exactly who told her. Wouldn't she like to have been the one who told her about Jesus? Wouldn't that have been a wonderful event in anybody's life, to have been the one who pointed this woman to Jesus and her eventual cure?

But we don't know who that was. But we have the opportunity of talking to people about Jesus. We can talk to many people about Jesus, knowing that many of them will pay no attention.

But what about that one? Like this woman who hears God opens her ears, who believes, who applies, who is saved because we pointed them to the Savior. Let's be faithful to tell others about Jesus. And so she heard and she believed. And what is remarkable is when you think about it, Jesus was crowded by people who in a sense we might say believed in Him. They were following Him. They were listening to Him. They were watching Him with great interest and curiosity. But as the account unfolds in Scripture, we learn that most of these didn't really believe in their hearts. They just had a curiosity about Him. But here and there, there's somebody who really, really, really believes.

This woman is one of them. She heard. She believed with unwavering faith.

She believed, we read. She said, if I may touch His garment, I shall be made well. She said, in the Greek literally, was saying, kept on saying, if I can just get to Him, if I can just touch His garment, I'll be made well. If I can just get to Him, if I can just touch His garment, I shall be made well.

She sang it over and over and over to herself. I shall be made well. I shall literally be saved.

Sozo is the Greek word. I shall be saved. And that word is used for things like being saved from disease, saved from death, saved from disaster.

But can't you see the double meaning in that word? If I can get to Jesus, I shall be saved. And indeed, that's exactly what happened. She got to Jesus, and she was saved. She heard. She believed what she heard. And she sought the one that she heard about. She didn't just say, well, that's interesting. That's nice.

Maybe I'll get to see Him someday. She heard, and she came, quickly, on a mission, insistently, to the only one that could cure her. Despite all human remedies, they did no good. She came to Jesus, and she found what she needed. And coming to Jesus, she received an immediate cure, a perceived cure she felt in her body immediately, that she was healed of her disease, a merciful cure. She had what my translation calls an affliction. The Greek word is stronger.

It's a word that is often used for a whip, a scourge, mastic. Because she was tortured. She was in great pain because of this disease. And she came to Jesus and was cured. Now, you need to understand, people, that the cures, the healings, the miracles of the Bible are not there to draw attention to themselves.

I've already mentioned this, but I emphasize it again. They are there to teach us something of spiritual value, something about Jesus, something about truth, something about the Word of God. We need to see what these things are illustrating. And in this case, it illustrates that when we come to Jesus in faith, we get more than we ask for, as she certainly did. But this account should encourage our faith.

We not only see, what did I say, that we have seen, number one, an amazing Savior, and number two, a desperate seeker, but we have a competent counselor. We read about this in verses 30 through 34 because it's clear that though she was healed, as far as Christ is concerned, the work was not yet complete. Well, you say, what else was needed? She was cured. That was it.

Now, pay attention. Though she was healed of her disease, the work was not yet complete. What is missing?

What is incomplete? Well, she needs to become open. She needs to testify of her faith. She needs to publicly identify with Christ. She needs to let others know what the Lord has done for her. She has been healed, but God is not going to let her be secret and silent and quiet about it. She's got to become an instrument in His hands to be helpful to others and to point them to the same Savior. And so if she's going to become all that she is meant to be, not just healed of her disease, but also an instrument of usefulness in the hands of God, then she needs more than physical healing.

She needs something to make her spiritually effective, and that's even more important than the disease because she is going to be healed. And so that brings us, therefore, to this inquiry, this question of Christ, this purposeful inquiry. Jesus turned around in the crowd and said, Who touched my clothes? Now, Christ had a reason for that question. It's not that Jesus didn't know. I think when you read that the first time, you think, well, this is the human side of Jesus, and He doesn't know who touched Him.

But as you look at it more carefully, you realize He did know. He's not saying this for His information. He's saying it for this woman's completion.

She's got more than needs to be done. And so He says this not so that He can identify the one who was healed, but so that the one who was healed can be identified to others around her. He said this, in other words, to compel a public profession from this woman of what Christ has done for her. Now, the disciples don't understand what's going on. What do you mean, Jesus, who touched you? The disciples said to Him, You see the multitudes thronging You, and You say, Who touched me? Dozens have touched You. Scores have touched You. Countless numbers of people have touched You. It would be impossible to say who had touched You. But again, there's the touch of the jostling crowd, the incidental touch, the touch that has no particular meaning to it.

It's merely circumstantial and accidental and has to do with what's going on in that particular place at that particular time. And then there's that deliberate touch, that personal touch, that powerful touch, that miraculous touch, that touch of faith, that touch of receiving from Christ what only He can do. Only one person experienced that on this particular occasion. And Jesus says, I want that person to speak up. I want that person to be known. I want that person to identify herself.

Who touched me? For though Jesus knew who she was, and she knew who she was, she knew she had been healed, she felt in her body that she was healed and she was right, but Jesus insists that she must tell others what she had done. And so the woman fearing and trembling, she was an introvert. She was quiet. She was shy.

You can tell that about her. Jairus was probably just the opposite. He was outgoing. He was public.

He did not mind being seen and noticed and publicly identified. The woman just the opposite. She didn't want to be seen. She didn't want to be known.

She didn't want to draw attention to herself. But Jesus says, you must. It's not a matter of personality. It's a matter of obedience. It's a matter of growth and grace. It's a matter of sanctification. It's a matter of usefulness. It's a matter of effectiveness as an instrument in the hands of the Savior.

You must. And so though Jesus knew who she was and she knew who she was, others did not know who she was and they must find out as well. And so the woman came fearing and trembling knowing what had happened to her and came and fell down before him and told him the whole truth publicly. That was hard. Publicly.

In front of that crowd, she told everybody what Jesus had done for her. I've been sick 12 years. No cures. No medical treatment. My money's gone. I'm no better.

I'm worse. But I heard about Jesus and I just knew that if I could get to him and if I could touch his garment, I would be made well. Now, how did she know that?

How did she learn that? There are some mysteries in that. Nowhere in the Bible does it say if someone could touch the garment of Jesus, they'll be made whole. But the Bible surely tells us that if we get to Jesus and trust in him, we shall be made whole. And this was her way of doing that with her limited understanding, her expression of doing exactly that, getting to Jesus and laying hold of him. And when she did, she was cured of her disease. And Jesus said to her, verse 34, daughter, your faith has made you well.

Go in peace and be healed of your affliction. Daughter, sounds like she's part of the family. Daughter, a son and a daughter of God. That terminology is applied to those who have been saved, who have been born of the Spirit of God.

Right? Daughter, said Jesus to her, your faith has made you well. Your faith is the instrument that God has used to save your soul. Your faith has had a wonderful power. Not that there's really any power in the faith, but even Jesus speaks in that kind of language here. Your faith has made you whole. Now, the theologian comes down and says, well, well, well, well, not exactly that. It wasn't her faith that did it. It was Jesus who did it.

Her faith was the instrument. Yes, yes, yes. That's true. That's right.

That's important to know. But we talk in this language. Your faith has had an amazing effect. Your faith, for all general purposes, has had an unusual power.

Your faith has touched the power of God. Your faith. And what is faith? Faith is believing the word of God and acting upon it. Now, what we know is different from person to person.

And this woman knew a whole lot less than we do. But you see, we have a whole chapter in Hebrews, we'll get to it eventually, chapter 11, that we often call the heroes of faith. All Old Testament people who had never heard of Jesus, who didn't know about the cross, who didn't know about the resurrection, who didn't know the smallest amount of the truth that we know about Jesus, but all of them are honored because of their faith. They believed what they knew. They believed what had been given to them. They believed the revelation of God that had come to them. They believed the word of God and acted upon it. That's faith. And we may not all have the same amount of revelation, the same amount of knowledge, but we all have the same responsibility to believe the revelation, however much it is, little or much, but to believe the revelation that has been given to us. We are responsible to believe it, and she did. What did she know about Jesus?

Not a whole lot. She knew that he apparently had miraculous power. He cast out demons. He healed diseases. He calmed the storm.

He's an amazing person. She knew that he had power to heal others, and she knew that Jesus had compassion on others. She had heard enough to know that whenever people applied to him for help, he always helped them. He always came to their aid. He always responded in compassion to their need. And so she took these minimal truths, and she said, I think I could apply that to myself.

He can do it, and he seems willing to do it. If I can just get to him, I shall be made well. And she was. Daughter, your faith has made you well. And she had a transformed body, but more importantly, she had a transformed life. Daughter, your faith has saved you, not only in body, but in soul. Daughter, your faith has changed your heart. Daughter, God has done something for you that all these around you have not received because they haven't applied with the same kind of humble faith that you have. Daughter, you have new life.

You have the new birth. Now, there are a lot of things that we could and should learn from this account, so let's take a few in closing. Number one, we realize that Jesus is no respecter of persons. He's just as willing and eager to heal an unknown poverty-stricken woman of no influence, of no reputation, just an ordinary person.

He's just as willing to help her as he is the daughter of a prominent synagogue official. It makes no difference to him. And when the Bible says that God is no respecter of persons, it doesn't mean that he'll save people whether they believe or not, that he'll do all kinds of things for people regardless of whether they repent or not.

That's the way some people take that idea. That's not what the Bible is telling us. The Bible is telling us that if you're rich and you come to Jesus with humble faith, you shall receive what you need, that if you're poor and come to Jesus with humble faith, you shall receive what you need. If you are white and come to Jesus with humble faith, you'll receive what you need. If you're black, if your skin is black, and you come to Jesus with humble faith, you shall receive what you need. If you're highly educated and come with humble faith, that's hard for the highly educated, but if you'll come with humble faith, you'll receive what you need. If you are uneducated and are willing to acknowledge that you are in need, and sometimes the uneducated are as proud as the well-educated, but if you'll come in humble faith, you'll receive what you need. God is no respecter of persons. Whoever you are, whatever your background, whatever your education, whatever your bank account, high or low in any of these categories, if you come in humble faith, you will receive what you need.

God is no respecter of persons. Furthermore, we learn that Jesus can do the impossible. With God, all things are possible, the Bible tells us, to him who believes. All things are possible. He can do it.

He can do whatever needs to be done. When the children of Israel were out in the wilderness and there was no food available for them, and they were complaining, and Moses went to God, and God promised to feed them. The question was, can God spread a table in the wilderness?

Looks impossible. Can God spread a table in the wilderness? Yes he can, and yes he did. He spread a table that fed all those people, hundreds of thousands, as many as two million of them.

He spread a table day after day after day after day after day that fed a multitude in the wilderness. You say that's impossible. Of course it's impossible with anyone but God.

You know, most of the objections that people have to the Christian faith, to what's given to us in the Bible, are objections that have to do with human impossibility. I don't see how that's possible. I don't see how a flood could cover the whole earth. I don't see how building a boat could save people out of a flood like that.

I don't see how a swale could swallow a man, and he should live in the belly of the whale for three days and then come out alive. I don't see how this could be done. I don't see how that could be done. Of course you don't, because humanly it's impossible. I don't see, and nobody else could see, how this woman could be cured of her disease, but she was. I don't see how Jairus' daughter could be raised from the dead, but she was with God. All things are possible to the one who believes. Do you believe that? Amen.

Jesus can do the impossible. But a third thing that I learned from this account is, in order to be helped by Jesus, you have to be brought to a place of desperation, no half-heartedness. Yeah, give me what I want in your proud, expecting attitude. I deserve it. You ought to give it to me. I deserve better than this.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, not that way. But when you're made desperate, a proud synagogue ruler, who by religion and by his community would do anything but come to Jesus, but when he gets desperate, he comes to Jesus. A poor woman who is incurably ill and has no hope of a cure, except if Jesus will do it, is brought to the end of herself in desperation as she comes to Jesus and she finds what she needs. And as long as you're relying upon yourself or upon other human remedies, in whole or in part, don't expect to receive anything from God, because that's not really faith, is it? You're depending upon a little bit in God and a little bit in man. I can take care of this situation by myself.

Okay. I think that's what's happened to our country, the United States of America. There was a time when we depended upon God, not that everybody was truly born again, but there was a culture of acknowledging God, a need for God, recognizing that God had done unusual things for this country, realizing that we had a responsibility to God, realizing that his commandments were important for the well-ordering of society. And we've cast all that out. We don't need that. We don't need God. We don't need the Ten Commandments. We don't need the Word of God. Yeah, how are we doing now?

It's not a very pretty picture. And it'll only get worse until we get desperate enough to say we need God. I need God as an individual. Our country needs God. We need God. We need His blessing. We need His power. We need His grace. We need His guidance.

We need His protection. And to do that, we must submit ourselves to Him and follow His Word. We must accept His Word as true. Desperation is needed many times before we will truly come to Christ. But a fourth and final lesson we learned from this is that you must be willing to declare what Jesus has done for you.

The work isn't complete until that is done. You must declare what Jesus has done for you. There are some biblically prescribed things that Christians, those who have been saved by the grace of God, are commanded to do. Follow the Lord in believer's baptism.

Well, I don't see any age for that. I don't have to be baptized to be saved. And this woman didn't have to declare who she was to be healed. But after she was healed, Jesus said, you've got to declare it.

The work isn't really complete. What God is doing for you and in you isn't complete until you follow through on this obedience. If you have been saved, then you, listen to me, must be baptized. Not in order to be saved, but in order to be obedient, in order to become useful. What are you saved for? Are you saved just to keep from going to hell and then to live your whole life for yourself without any regard to serving God? Are you really saved, if that's your attitude?

It's a legitimate question. But if you've been saved by the grace of God, then step up and say so, in the way that the Bible tells you to. You say, well, I don't have to do it that way. Yes, you do.

Why? Because the Bible says so. Have you become a follower of Jesus Christ or not? To become a follower of Jesus Christ means to submit to his authority, to submit to his word. Otherwise, you are not a follower. You are not a believer.

You are fooling yourself and deceiving yourself. And you may be on the road to eternal damnation. If you have been saved, you have a responsibility to say so, the way that Jesus told you to say so in believer's baptism. If you have been saved and follow the Lord in believer's baptism, you have a responsibility to continue identifying yourself with Christ and with the people of God in the way the Bible tells you to, as an active part of a local body of believers.

This is just simply what the Bible teaches us. Why the stubbornness? Why the reluctance?

Why the unwillingness? Who touched me? And the woman came trembling and fearing and fell down before him and told him everything. Have you been touched by the Savior?

Then demonstrated by your humble obedience to what the word of God declares. Who touched me? Some of you need this message today and God is speaking to you through it. Who touched me? The woman touched Jesus. Who touched me? Millions have touched Jesus down through the years since the time this woman did. But millions of others who have heard about him have not really touched him.

Which category are you in? Who touched me? said Jesus. The woman did. Others have.

But the question is, have you? From William Hendrickson's commentary on Mark 534. Who touched me? It was the voice of the master.

And the woman's heart beat faster and faster. Trembling, she came and bowed her head. I touched thee, Lord, was what she said. But the master answered, Go thy way.

Thy faith has made thee whole this day. Have you touched me? I heard it. It was the voice of the master. And oh, my heart beat faster and faster. You came with a throng to God's house today. But I felt not your touch as you went your way. I was ashamed and bowed my head.

Reach out a bit farther next time, he said. Shall we pray? Father, what wonderful truth you have given us in your word, O Lord. Give us the faith to believe it, to act upon it. Give us, O Lord, the desire to submit to it. Give us, O Lord, the determination to obey it, whether we feel like it or not. O Lord God, do a transforming work in every heart and life who hears this message today. And we pray in Jesus' name. Amen.