The Solution (Part C)

He had just said to the woman, your faith has made you well.

Now he's taking that as his text to Jairus, and he's saying just believe. Just have faith. Faith is not positive thinking. Faith is not wishful thinking. It is not mindless thinking. It is not superstitious thinking or selfish thinking. It is a willful decision to submit. To trust in God as the scripture says and leaving it right there. The only one without pressure, Jesus Christ, asked a question that sounded unrealistic, even selfish. Who touched me?

It's not realistic. And that's what the disciples are saying, but they didn't get it yet. They didn't understand that love was in the power of Christ that went out from him. He was fully aware. He felt love go out of him into another.

The same way electricity goes through, you know, a copper wire. That current flying through. He discerns a touch on him, on his robe. Not overlooked.

He's not careless about this. In fact, in this little section of Mark in verses 27, 28, 30, 31, we read she touched his garment. She touched his garment. Who touched my garment? Who touched me? The disciples said that. You say, who touched you? Really, she touched his garment.

Close enough. That was him. All contact with him is instantly noticed to this very day. We think our prayers aren't heard because he doesn't respond. He doesn't answer. I even write out in my prayers sometimes, why am I writing this, Lord? You're not going to answer my question.

Why am I asking it? But I am compelled. I'm built that way. I have the ability to reason. And part of reasoning involves inquiry.

And part of worship involves inquiry to God. And I know he doesn't rebuke me for it. He doesn't have to answer me either.

He knows that. That's an agreement we have with him, is it not? On my part, I will do what I'm told, Lord. On your part, you will do what you want.

That's our agreement. You be God, and I will not try to be God. Verse 32, and he looked around to see her who had done this thing. Oh, man, those eyes sweeping the crowd. He stops.

Everything stops. The blessings from God, they're to be brought to light. When he delivered the maniac, verse 19, however, Jesus did not permit him to go with him, that is, but said to him, Go home to your friends and tell them what great things the Lord has done for you and how he has had compassion on you. There are times when Jesus had to suppress this, or made attempts to, because of the reaction of people getting out. You know, we read in one spot, Jesus said, Don't tell anybody that. And the man went around telling everybody, and Jesus couldn't even minister anymore.

It wasn't good. But in this case, again, she is not free to conceal what Christ has done for her. Being a secret disciple of Christ is the same thing as being a weaker disciple of Christ.

Now, there are exceptions. There are times of heavy persecution where the church moves underground because the mission is still to save souls, and if we all just recklessly get ourselves killed, there's no one left to save souls. But as a rule, if your motivation is cowardice, you're afraid what people are going to say is something, you have a conversation with the Lord now about that. You tell him right now, I'm afraid. I'm afraid you're going to laugh at me, ridicule me, mock me.

What can I do? So that he can say, Well, there's not much you can do other than coming to me and telling me, and I can do something on your behalf. And so she goes, this poor little thing, the ride that she has this day, she goes through, if I could just touch him, I'll be healed, and she's not sure if she could touch him. She finally touches him, she gets healed, and then he calls her out, the drama of it all, in front of everybody.

Who touched me? A terrifying moment for her as she sees his eyes moving through the crowd. But the woman, verse 33, fearing and trembling, knowing what had happened to her, came and fell down before him and told him the whole truth.

You can hold it back. She just knew I'm busted, and she's trembling, she's fearing and trembling. The Lord's instant reaction to her healing, she paused, and then she comes forward. Was she afraid because she got a blessing without permission? Was she afraid because everybody would have known that she had defiled everybody on the way to the healing?

We're not told. But she comes, and she falls down before him, and she tells the whole truth, verse 34. And he said to her, Daughter, your faith has made you well. Go in peace and be healed of your affliction. How many times do we want to hear him say that?

And he does not. And how many times, how many times does Christ say, I'm not going to heal you? And the one who asked to be healed and their loved ones say, OK, Lord, your will, not ours. And hell is enraged because of it. Because there is a Christian still serving, still believing, still following, and there's nothing hell can do about it.

I think that's incredible. Now, I don't want to be the one. I don't want to be the one with the affliction. But we all are afflicted at some point or another.

There's no way around it. Understanding that faith is that deciding factor that leads us into glory. How we should treasure our faith because of the blood of Jesus Christ, because of the suffering and dying of Jesus Christ. And he died on multiple levels. It was not just the blood coming out of his body. It was taking on sin for us in front of the Father.

There was the public shame. There's so many things that went into his death that are so far beyond us that we just know enough to accept and be accepted because of it. He was not upset at her for touching him.

He applauded her. She trusted him. Trusting Jesus Christ is faith. That is the meaning of faith. It's trusting him. Faith is not in the abstract.

It is concrete. Faith is not in the power of anything. Faith is in the person of Jesus Christ. It's in him, who he is, and not in some magical force that's out there. His power is him. It is not an additional thing that he has.

It is him. The kingdom of God is power because that's who God is. 1 Corinthians 4.20, For the kingdom of God is not in word, but in power.

Sometimes we have to wait to death to see enough of it. But by faith, we begin to see it. And so he speaks tenderly to her. This is the only place where Jesus addresses someone in the sense of his daughter. He talks about the daughters of Jerusalem, the daughters of Abraham.

He says, daughter, your faith, directly to her. Now he's 31, 32 years old. She is likely 25 to 45, somewhere in there.

You factor in the 12 years of the issue and you just kind of come up with an age. In other words, he's not old enough to be her father. And yet he speaks to her as a father to a child. You come along and you read, you know your Old Testament, you know your New Testament enough, you say, for unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulder. And his name will be called Wonderful Counselor, the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace. This is one of those many signatures of the deity of Christ, that he is God. He is God the Son and God the Father has no problem with it.

So with this word, she's no longer an outcast among her people. Meanwhile, the father of the daughter, he is helpless to interfere. What can he say?

Stop it. She's waited 12 years. She can wait another hour.

That must have been grueling for him. Verse 35, while he was still speaking, some came from the ruler of the synagogue's house who said, Your daughter is dead. Why trouble teach her any further? If she only just waited, if she just let the Lord get to my house, this wouldn't happen this way. And of course, at this point, he's done.

He's devastated. Why couldn't she wait her turn? John's gospel in chapter 11, we read about, again, the perspective of Christ, that he has a different view of things and he's trying to let us know what that view is about through our New Testaments. In John chapter 11, now Martha said to Jesus, Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. See, Martha didn't yet learn that Jesus has power over death even in this life, or as he lived, that is, as he walked amongst us. Then John 11, 32, her sister, not only was Martha the one that said, If you had been here, but Mary. Mary came where Jesus was and saw him. She fell down at his feet, saying to him, Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. And so in both cases, here with Jairus and then there with Martha and Mary, they're all saying, you know, we were that close to the blessing.

Where were you? If you had only done this, God, how many times have you prayed that? If you only did this, things would be so much better, so much different. We'll come back to that in a moment.

Why trouble the teacher any further? No earnest, needy soul could ever trouble Jesus Christ. No one could ever be a nuisance to him when you come in need. In verse 36, as soon as Jesus heard the word that was spoken, he said to the ruler of the synagogue, Do not be afraid, only believe. Mark says Jesus reacts instantly to what was going on in the Father's heart. Look again at verse 36. As soon as Jesus heard the word that was spoken, instantly he goes into, just trust me, trust God.

That's his response. He said to the ruler of the synagogue, Do not be afraid, only believe. His first words were words to strengthen this believer. Now faith could be one of the most difficult things, but it can be one of the most powerful things also. And that's why we seek it. So the psalmist writes, Yeah, yeah, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death. Well, that shadow means it's there. I will fear no evil, for you are with me. And I might momentarily be with you.

That's how it is. At some point, the shadow thinks it gets the last say, but it never does amongst the righteous. He just preached on this to her. He had just said to the woman, Your faith has made you well.

Now he's taking that as his text to Jairus, and he's saying, Just believe. Just have faith. Faith is not positive thinking. Faith is not wishful thinking. It is not mindless thinking. It is not superstitious thinking or selfish thinking. It is a willful decision to submit to trusting God as the scripture says and leaving it right there, without conditions, without terms.

Okay, I'll trust. Imagine if God said, Okay, you can argue with me about this. You can say, Okay, Lord, I'll trust you if, when Abraham was interceding for the Sodomites, it wasn't a bargain. He was hoping to just get a blessing, but he never made it a condition of his own salvation, his own faith. It's not a deal like that. God made the deal. You can find ten.

I'll spare it. So John 7, verse 38, Jesus said, He who believes in me as the scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water, if you believe me according to the scripture. Now, we have these intelligent people that come along and tell us, Don't believe in everything in the scripture. Believe what they say about the scripture. And we reject them categorically. And they are after our youth because they sound so smart to some.

They don't sound smart to me. I feel like, you know, Foghorn when I hear them. You big dummy! Oh, no, that's not Foghorn. That's somebody else. Never mind.

Let's move on. But I do feel like, you know, who wants to listen to you? Chuck Smith years ago, he was supposed to be on a radio with this person that was part of this Jesus seminar that decided what verses were true and what verses were not. And he would have no part of it. He said, I'm not interested in talking to someone who rejects the scripture, not on these like this. I mean, if you're going to lead somebody to Christ, yes, but not if you're just going to hear the other side tell you how bad the scripture is.

He wasn't interested. And I agree with that under those circumstances. It is the fool that has said in his heart that there is no God, and it is the fool that thinks God is not able to protect his word. The Bible has discrepancies that are self-correcting. And it is complete, and it is trustworthy because God is so. Verse 37, And he permitted no one to follow him except Peter, James, and John, the brother of James. Yeah, it's that I got this moment, of course. The Lord is, you know, he's just moving on with what he's doing.

Jairus, he just shot. He's going to trust. He is going to trust at this point. But Jesus is saying, I need witnesses, not spectators. I want those who are in this and not outside of this. And the Bible later portrays Peter as a man of prayer and dedication because he was with Christ, and that rubbed off on him. That holiness got into Peter. See, the Jews, according to, for example, Psalm 55, verse 17, had three times a day that they would pray. And when we come to the book of Acts, we find Peter at each interval praying. In Acts chapter 2, at 9 a.m. he is praying.

At noon in Acts chapter 10, and then in Acts chapter 3, there at 3 p.m. he's praying again because he had been with Christ, because Christ had taken him with him. We learn these things from Scripture because we're supposed to respond like Peter did. We get to walk with Christ through the Word, the printed Scripture. Those Jews got to walk with Yahweh through their Old Testament Scripture.

It has just been further developed in Christ. Verse 38, Then he came to the house of the ruler of the synagogue, and saw a tumult, and those who wept and wailed loudly. Now he's going to make a distinction between the genuine tears and the wailers for pay. These are not ocean-going wailers. They are professional. Jeremiah talks about them in the ninth chapter, I think it is, of Jeremiah.

He also mentions that they... I don't know who came up with this idea. You know, there's been a death. It's not enough sorrow. We've got to ramp this up. We've got to really act like we miss the person, or like we're all miserable.

I think it was a bad idea, and I'm glad we don't do it. Anyway, verse 39, And he came in, and he said to them, Why make this commotion and weep? The child is not dead, but sleeping. There it is again.

A perspective of God that doesn't match my perspective, that I've got to learn or suffer the confusion. Yeah, the child's not dead. Yeah, but only he could awaken her.

If she is sleeping this kind of a sleep, nobody else can wake her up but him. Without him, it would have been death. Again, John chapter 11, verses 11 and 14, These things he said, and after he said them, Our friend Lazarus sleeps, but I go that I may wake him, because nobody else could. Four days later, he gets there, of course, four days after the death of Lazarus. Then Jesus said to them plainly, Lazarus is dead. Because they said, well, if he's sleeping, he's going to get better. And then he says, no, he's dead. It's a euphemism, because from my perspective, he is not dead. He is coming back, and he's going to come back because of me, because that's who I am.

I can do this. Here, where he says the child is not dead but sleeping, that had impact. It was never forgotten. Who could ever forget that if you lived through this moment? I remember when he said it.

I didn't know what to think. Some may have said, no way, the ridiculers. Others were just anticipating what's going to happen next. For the rest of their lives, they would recall this.

Because his view is superior. And if he says she's not dead, they're not dead. And if he says, you're not going to die either.

If you're mine, you're not dying. You either believe it or you don't. John 11, verse 26 again. Whoever lives and believes in me shall never die.

And then he asks this question right on the heels of that same verse. Do you believe this? Do you believe it? Do you live like you believe it? Well, sometimes I do. Sometimes I do a pretty good job, Lord.

You know it because you helped me do it. But then there's those other times. But in the end, you're still there. In the end, you may have been very clumsy about your faith, but it's faith nonetheless.

And that counts. It means something with God. Lord, I believe, help my unbelief. And the Lord granted him his request.

Verse 40 now. And they ridiculed him. But when he had put them all outside, he took the father and the mother of the child and those who were with him and entered where the child was lying. Now again, at this point, they had not seen anything like this. And they ridiculed him.

Not the ones going with him, but the whalers and some of the other people. And they still ridiculed him. But ultimately, every knee shall bow, every tongue shall confess. Verse 41. And he took the child by the hand and said to her, Telaetha kumai, which is translated, little girl, I say to you, arise. Now he's speaking in the Aramaic, or he spoke in the Aramaic, which is believed to have been his principle language amongst the people. It means literally, girl, get up and that is just what happened.

Verse 42. Immediately the girl arose and walked. She was 12 years of age and they were overcome with great amazement.

And I bet they were. What happened when he was 12? I mean, you've got the woman with the 12 years of disease. You've got this little girl who's 12 years old and 12 years of joy and light in the home and then snuffed out. And when he was 12, he came into knowledge, a fuller knowledge of his identity, of who he was to the father and who the father was to him. We read about it in Luke chapter 2. And when he was 12 years old, they went up to Jerusalem according to the custom of the feast. And we know the rest of the story. How did you not know I'd be about my father's business?

I don't think he's kind of scolding them, right? 12 years old. I don't get this. How could you not know this? Huh? It's a cute moment because there was no malice in it.

We know. He's just this innocent child that is deep into faith, what we believe. He's sort of perplexed. We don't have an answer, do we? They don't say, well, that was their answer.

They had no answer. And it is a wonderful part of Scripture. So about the time that this child was born, this woman began suffering.

This man is alive. The Christian has to come face to face with suffering in this life and deal with it from a perspective of faith. It continues in verse 43. But he commanded them strictly that no one should know it and said that something should be given to her to eat. Sort of a life goes on thing. We'll take it from the bottom up. When he says she's hungry, give her something to eat.

The child wants to eat. That life goes on. But he looked to keep this a low profile. He knew what would happen if it got out of hand. But Matthew adds this report, Matthew 9 26, and the report of this went out into all the land.

These things would speed up his execution because his executioners, of course, detested these kinds of things. But I'll close with this. What future do we want for our children? What future would my mom and dad, loving the Lord, what would they want from me?

The Jews put it in ink, the Holy Spirit, in Psalm 144. That our sons may be as plants grown up in their youth. That our daughters may be as pillars sculptured in palace style. Of course, in relation to God. That's what all the psalms are about.

They're not humanistic psalms. That my sons would be potted plants. That's not the idea. That they would thrive. That they would grow stronger and grow upward. Pillars are holding up truth. Resist the seduction of rebels. You young Christians, you are going to face seducers. They're coming for you. This should not terrify you.

This should arm you. You should be saying, and may the Lord use me through it. Acts chapter 2, when Peter is preaching there at Pentecost, he just lays out all these truths before them. He says about the coming of the Spirit, he says, for the promise is to you and to your children, and to all who are afar off.

That would be us. As many as the Lord will call. Of course the implication is responding to the call. It continues this way, Luke adds this, and with many other words he testified and exhorted them saying, be saved from this perverse generation. And you live in a perverse generation. And so if they're going to be perverse, if they will not adhere to scripture in defiance, we defy back with adherence to the word. To love, to believe in the Lord, to preach the word, to let the light shine, to be wise as serpents, as harmless as dubbed, to take up our cross, as many things that belong to the Christian faith, and we are supposed to master all of them. So the solution to life is Jesus Christ.

And that's it. Thanks for tuning in to Cross Reference Radio for this study in the book of Mark. Cross Reference Radio is the teaching ministry of Pastor Rick Gaston of Calvary Chapel Mechanicsville in Virginia. To learn more information about this ministry, visit our website, crossreferenceradio.com. Once you're there, you'll find additional teachings from Pastor Rick. We encourage you to subscribe to our podcast. When you subscribe, you'll be notified of each new edition of Cross Reference Radio. You can search for Cross Reference Radio on your favorite podcast app. That's all we have time for today, but we hope you'll join us next time as Pastor Rick continues to teach through the book of Mark, right here on Cross Reference Radio.