The Power and Pity of Jesus, Part 1 B

And what has happened to her is she has just been healed in a split second and she knows it and she therefore knows what Jesus had been saying all along and what Mark is trying to let us know that this is Jesus Christ, the Son of God. Listen, the three and a half years of Jesus' public ministry were marked by healings, preaching, and lots of confrontation. In Jesus' own words, I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. Yet his ministry had something else, something even pastors and Bible students often overlook. In the midst of his battles with the religious elite and with those who denied the truth, Jesus stopped and He showed compassion to those who most desperately needed it. And in doing that, the Lord modeled the kind of ministry that you and I should demonstrate to others. Today, John MacArthur considers the compelling pity of Jesus.

Follow along in Mark chapter 5 as John continues his study called Jesus Over All. Anybody who understands the Bible, anybody who understands the Holy Scripture knows that the human race fell as a result of the sin of Adam and Eve and that mankind in total was catapulted into sin. Since this is universally the case, the greatest question facing us is, is there escape? Is there any hope for deliverance from sin and its horrendous and everlasting consequences?

Well the Bible gives the answer and the answer is a resounding yes...yes. There is a deliverer, there is a rescuer, there is a Savior, there is one, none other than Jesus Christ, the Son of God. It is He, say the prophets and the Apostles, who will reverse the curse. The miracles then were Jesus' self-revelation, the disclosure, the manifestation, the verification of His person by His power. To go along with that unparalleled power was unparalleled pity...unparalleled pity. So here again, another time in Mark's account, chapter 5 verses 21 and following, we see both the power and the pity of our Lord made manifest.

Let me give you a few hooks to hang your thoughts on and to hang the narrative on as it moves. And I want to do it from the vantage point of the person of Jesus. He gives us a pattern that we can follow. First of all, His accessibility...His accessibility. His entire ministry is spent in public. His entire ministry is spent in the streets, in the highways, on the hillsides, in the fields, in the synagogues, in the homes, by the sea with only occasional retreats into isolation for the purpose of rest, for the purpose of instruction and explanation to His disciples, and sometimes for the purpose of being alone with His Father. But He always came back to the crowds. Secondly, He is available.

That digs a little deeper, accessible to be touched and contacted, to be spoken to, available to give Himself, take His time, His energy, His effort. This moves a little deeper and we see that in verse 24, and He went off with Him. He just stopped everything in the midst of this mass of people and became available to this one man. Even though the large crowd was following Him and pressing in on Him, it wouldn't be easy, frankly, for Him to get out of the crowd to the house of Jairus, though obviously He lived in Capernaum and that was nearby. But nonetheless, He made the effort, it would be an effort to leave the crowd and become available to this one man. I can't even begin to imagine the demands that were placed on Jesus. And as I said, there were times when He couldn't take it anymore and He did retreat because He was weary and exhausted. But the Creator walked with people. The gospels are filled with the stories of His availability to individuals.

Jairus' heart was breaking. But that wasn't all that was in his heart. He had faith in Jesus.

There is no doubt in the statements that he makes. He says, come and she will live. Whether she is sick or dead, she will live if you come. And so Jesus goes. And here you see the pity that's always connected to the power. I love Matthew 12.20 which basically quotes Isaiah 42.3, a bruised reed, He will not break and smoking flax, He will not quench. When someone is bruised and battered and broken and the flame is about to go out, He doesn't break that person further. He doesn't blow that wick out. He comes to bring rest and strength and restoration.

I love that. So much compassion in the heart of God for those who suffer. The man's faith was to be tested on the way to the house, however.

According to verse 24, they're off to the house. His heart must have been beating with joy as he anticipated that his daughter would be well as soon as they reached the house and on the way there is an interruption. Let's call this his interruptibility.

That's a virtue that all of us have to work at a little bit. We get going in one direction for a noble cause, right? We get going in one direction for a very, very noble cause, the noblest of all causes in the case of our Lord and yet he is interruptible on the way to Jairus' house with the crowd following.

That means he was moving in the middle of a mass of people, pressing in on him. Here comes the miracle inside the miracle. A woman who had had a hemorrhage for twelve years appears in the scene. Now this woman is described in a lot of detail.

In fact, there are seven participial phrases used to describe this woman and her condition, a very extensive description. To simplify it, she is a female who has a bleeding problem and she has had this bleeding problem for as long as Jairus' daughter has been alive. She's had this bleeding problem since Jesus was about twenty years old. Now we don't know what caused it, Scripture doesn't tell us this, lots of possibilities. She was having a constant loss of blood, hemorrhaging.

That would involve a loss of strength, a female kind of problem like that would certainly involve embarrassment, the danger of death, severe physical effects. There was more than that, that alone would have been enough. But on top of that, there was Old Testament law to consider. According to the twelfth chapter of Leviticus, verses 3 through 8, and the fifteenth chapter of Leviticus, verses 19 to 27, a woman was unclean for seven days after such an experience. There was a woman who was unclean for twelve years. She could never be clean, never.

What did that mean? An unclean defiled woman couldn't go to the synagogue, couldn't go to the temple. She was an outcast. For twelve years, if she touched her husband, he was unclean. If she touched her children, they were unclean. If she touched her friends, they were unclean. If she touched a stranger, he was unclean. What was life like for her?

There was no way to become ceremonially clean. Verse 26 tells us what she had tried to do. She had endured much at the hands of many physicians.

Some of you may be able to identify with that. Endured much at the hands of many physicians, had spent all that she had and now she's in poverty, was not helped at all, but rather had grown worse. That is not an advertisement for the first century Galilean Medical Association.

They didn't help. By the way, Mark says that, Luke left that part out. Luke, being a physician, exercised some discretion and Luke says she was incurable. Nonetheless, she had spent all of her money, whether on the famous doctors who served the rich or the fakers who exploited the poor, the result was the same, all her money was out of her pocket into the physician's pocket and she was worse. She had heard about Jesus' healing power, she believed it, she violated the acceptable boundaries of her tradition and the Old Testament and she went to the crowd. And she would have had to have rubbed herself against people, who knows how many, defiling them all ceremonially, although her disease was not contagious, but ceremonially as she worked her way through the crowd. Trying to avoid disclosure and further embarrassment and resentment by the people, verse 27 says, after hearing about Jesus, she came up in the crowd behind Him and touched His cloak.

Hoping to avoid notice but with a strong faith, to overcome her natural embarrassment and fear of public shame, she kind of sneaks her way in, maybe she had her face covered, and she touched His cloak. Luke says she touched the fringe of His cloak. According to Numbers chapter 15, verses 37 and following, the Jews were to put tassels on the bottom of their cloaks, to mark them as those who belong to God. And you remember the Pharisees wanting to parade their supposed devotion to God, enlarge their tassels, according to Matthew 23 and verse 5, a part of their hypocritical ostentation. But Jesus wore the traditional robe with the traditional tassels on the bottom.

The word touch is actually to cling to, to grasp, to hold on to. She says to herself in verse 28, if I just touch His garments, if I just grasp His garments, I will get well. Again there's no doubt here, there's no lack of faith, there's no equivocation, if I can just cling to the fringe of His robe, if I can grasp it and it would be a desperate clutching with all thoughts swirling in her mind about being where she shouldn't be, contaminating people, the embarrassment of it, but if she can just hang on to that, she believes she will get well.

This is not superstition about a robe. This is not some kind of magic. The healing was instant. Verse 29, I will get well, she said. Why did she have such confidence? Because of the many healings that had been done.

And you remember the Bible tells us that He healed all who came to Him. In other words, I don't have to expose myself publicly. I don't have to be seen.

I can crawl in on the bottom, on the ground, under the vision of everybody and just grab a tassel. There's so much power in Him. Immediately the flow of her blood, Luke says, the hemorrhage was dried up and she felt in her body that she was healed of her affliction. Time froze, the world stood still for her in that moment. The bleeding stopped.

Physical problem was solved. But not the social and what about the spiritual? What do we see here about Jesus? He was accessible.

You could walk right up to Him. He was available to go into your life to the degree that you needed Him there and He was interruptible. But I want to add another word, a fourth word, and that's the last point I want you to see. He was really indomitable...indomitable. I love that word. That means He took charge of this woman's destiny.

There's a relentlessness in Him right now. Verse 30 again begins by repeating the word immediately, immediately Jesus perceiving in Himself that the power proceeding from Him had gone forth, turned around in the crowd and said, who touched My garments? It's an amazing revelation, absolutely amazing. Immediately she was healed and immediately Jesus felt the power go out of Him.

That's a stunning reality, an amazing revelation. Listen, His power is personal. I think we can think of God as some kind of massive cosmic force. We can maybe overextend the notion of His impassibility to say that God is impassable means that He is not affected by what men do or do not do. But that does not mean that He does not feel every expression of power, whether it's power expressed in grace, or power expressed in wrath, whether it's sanctifying power, glorifying power, justifying grace, He feels the power. Luke 8 46 says, I was aware that power had gone out of Me. The expulsion of divine power that comes from Him into the life of that woman, Jesus actually experienced. He experienced the power flow that created the woman's body new, that replaced the old with a brand new organ system.

But on this occasion, He has more work to do and this is what's indomitable about Him. This woman had a place in the purpose of God, a place in the family of God. This was one of the chosen. This was one of God's sheep. For John 10, My sheep hear My voice, they know Me, they don't listen to strangers. And here He is about to call one of God's chosen whom the Father is drawing to Himself. This is the indomitable attitude of Christ who is never satisfied with a superficial answer but presses all the way to the issue of salvation. So with that in mind, He says, who touched My garments?

He didn't ask the question for information, but to draw her out of the crowd. It could be phrased, who are you who touched My garment? He is pursuing the sinner. Luke 19, 10, He's come to pursue, to seek and save, the inexhaustible grace that seeks not the sinner's temporal fulfillment but spiritual fulfillment. Here is irresistible grace. This is irresistible grace. This is the effectual calling. This is the irrepressible, resolute, resolved, undaunted Savior seeking the soul of one whose name was written in the Lamb's Book of Life before the foundation of the world. Well His disciples in fashion true to form said to Him, you see the crowd pressing in on You and You say, who touched Me? This is a pressure situation.

The verb here, sunflibo, flibo means to compress, to jam, sun that adds the preposition at the front that intensifies it. He's crushed, crammed in by this crowd. And the obvious question from a human viewpoint, because listen, there's been no dialogue, right? In the story so far, we know what she thought and we know what He thought, but nobody said anything, so nobody knows. She knows she's been healed. He knows she's been healed.

He knows there's more to do in her life, just as there was more to do in the demoniac's life on the other side of the lake and that's why they went over there. He wasn't finished with her either, but only the two of them knew and she didn't know what the end of the purposes of God were yet. She could have gone away healed, but there was more. It would have taken perhaps time for her to convince people that she was not unclean anymore, bringing her out of the crowd and declaring her clean would then open up the doors for her. But there was something even beyond that. Jesus, verse 32, looked around to see the woman who had done this.

This is the word paree, which we use for perimeter. He just looked all around to find this woman and finally she was willing to reveal herself. Luke adds that everybody was denying, it wasn't me, it wasn't me, but the woman fearing and trembling of what had happened to her.

Let me stop there for a minute. This is not the fear of embarrassment. This is not the fear of hostility from the crowd because she touched them in the process of getting to Him. This is holy terror.

This is holy fear. She's not afraid because of her offense. She is afraid because she's aware of what has happened to her. And what has happened to her is she has just been healed in a split second and she knows it and she therefore knows what Jesus had been saying all along and what Mark is trying to let us know that this is Jesus Christ, the Son of God. She is in the presence of divinity, or deity. This is not human embarrassment.

She got past that. This is holy fear. And by the way, it's the very same kind of fear that we saw back in chapter 4 verse 41 when they were coming across on the lake and the storm came, it says they were afraid. When Jesus stilled the storm, verse 41, they became very much afraid. They were more afraid of God in their boat than the storm outside their boat. It's intimidation by the presence of deity.

And that becomes more evident in what she does. She came and fell down before Him. Everybody knew what that meant. You didn't do that unless you were bowing to someone greater than yourself. Jews didn't bow to anybody...they didn't bow to anybody.

They didn't have a king. They bowed only to God. She collapses, fully aware of the terror of being a sinner in the presence of the Lord, a posture that begs for mercy for her sin. And then she has the opportunity to make a public confession. Verse 33, she told Him the whole truth, told her whole story, the confession of her sickness, the confession of her faith, the confession of her healing, the confession of her need for mercy. In fact, Luke says she declared it in the presence of all the people. So everybody around heard about her story. This is an open public confession, isn't it? She's confessing Him before men and to be confessed before His Father in heaven.

How do we know this was a real conversion? Again, I tell you, she believed everything that could be believed of what Jesus said as far as we know. But the capstone comes in verse 34 in His response. And He said to her, daughter...hmm...daughter?

There's a word to dispel fear, isn't it? This is the only time in the New Testament that a woman is so addressed by Jesus, daughter...daughter. Matthew chapter 9 says He added, be of good comfort, relax, rest. How can you call her your daughter?

Is she a child of God, a daughter of God? Yes, your faith has made you well, says the text. The Greek verb is sodzo, to save.

It's the word used in the Scripture for salvation. Your faith literally has saved you. And then this, go in...what?...peace. Jesus doesn't throw that around.

Peace belongs only to those who have made their peace with God. Here is a woman who has a need, knows there's no answer on a human level. Here is a woman who is humbled. She knows she's a sinner. She lives with the symbol of her sin every day of her life for twelve years. She has literally gone through all of the ceremonial things that you can imagine again and again and again. The idea of sin and corruption is clear to her.

She can't do anything about it. She comes in faith, unwavering confidence that He can heal her. And then she knows whose presence she's in and falls at His feet in worship and is called a daughter, told to be comforted, affirmed that she can go in peace and be healed of your affliction, recovered back to health, recovered back to society, recovered back to her family, recovered back to the synagogue and back to God. Life had been hard for her. The word affliction here, mastigos, it means a whip, a lash and a scourge. It's the word that was used for the instrument by which Jesus was scourged.

She had lived a very hard life. And now everything was new. Listen, aren't you glad that our Lord is accessible to you whenever you need Him, available to get involved in your life? Aren't you glad that He cares about you in a personal way and that He is interruptible no matter what He's doing, He will always respond to you when you come to Him in prayer? And He's inexhaustible, really, in completing spiritual purpose in your life. Do you understand that He comes to you in an indomitable, inexhaustible and relentless work that is being done?

And Philippians 1 says, when He begins it, He...what?...He finishes it...He finishes it if you believe. This is Grace to You with John MacArthur, Chancellor of the Masters University and Seminary, with a fresh perspective on the compassion of Christ from John's current study, Jesus Over All. John, the stories you're looking at in this study are some of the most fascinating episodes about Jesus that are recorded anywhere in Scripture, but the practical applications might not be obvious.

So can you help with that? What are some ways that our listeners can apply what they're seeing about Jesus in this study? There is nothing in all the Bible more practical, more applicable, more life-transforming, more significant on an hourly basis every day of your life than understanding the person and the power of Jesus. If you're a Christian, it is the person of Christ who dominates your life. It is Him you love above all, trust above all. It is Him that you turn to above all, pray to above all. It is Him that you proclaim above all.

You live not only in that love, but in the confidence that He is in complete control of your life. It is your understanding of the person and the power of Jesus that literally governs your life. So that's why He's the theme of the entire Bible. And speaking of that, let me suggest to you that you need to get a copy of the MacArthur Study Bible. This is the text of the Bible, New American Standard, English Standard Version, New King James and 25,000 footnotes explaining the Bible and therefore explaining what the Bible says about Jesus. You can get a study Bible in hardcover, leather cover, we have all of them here at Grace To You.

Also would recommend the Upper Room Book. It's really a book on the night that Jesus spent with his disciples before he died the next day. It looks at his final hours, and in that final evening with his disciples, he unloaded amazing promises for every believer.

That's right. Thanks, Jon. Friend, these Bible study tools Jon just mentioned, they're designed to help you get the most from your study of God's Word and to apply its truth to your life. To order the book The Upper Room and the MacArthur Study Bible, get in touch with us today.

The Upper Room is available in hardcover for $14 and shipping is free. And with the MacArthur Study Bible, besides all the features that Jon mentioned, it also includes a helpful guide on how to get the most out of your time in God's Word. Again, the study Bible is available in several English and non-English translations, and you can get it in softcover, hardcover, or premium leather.

To order, give us a call at 800-55-GRACE or go to gty.org. And if you'd like to review Jon's current series, Jesus Over All, all five of those messages are available for free at our website. In fact, you can download any message from Jon's more than five decades of pulpit ministry free of charge at our website. That's over 3,600 sermons, free at gty.org. Now for Jon MacArthur and the entire Grace To You staff, I'm Phil Johnson. Remember to watch Grace To You television Sundays on DirecTV, channel 378, or watch anytime at gty.org, and be here tomorrow as Jon looks at more of what Scripture reveals about the all-powerful Christ, deepening your worship of Him. Just another 30 minutes of unleashing God's truth, one verse at a time, on Grace To You.