Jairus’ Daughter

Immediately, the girl arose, and she walked. The power of the resurrection, the power over death, all of these things converged in the touch of Jesus in the home of Jairus. This is the Lord in whom we place our trust for life and for death. When everything has gone wrong, when everything we fear will happen has happened, do we stop praying? Should we stop bothering the Lord with our problems? In Mark chapter 5, we read about one family whose daughter was close to death.

Out of desperation, the girl's father ran to Jesus and begged Him to help, but the crowd said to stop bothering Him. Welcome to this Sunday edition of Renewing Your Mind. I'm Nathan W. Bingham. We're currently in Mark's Gospel with a short sermon series highlighting the power of Jesus during His earthly ministry. Next Sunday will be our final time in this Gospel, so I do encourage you to respond today while there's time and request the hardcover edition of R.C. Sproul's line-by-line commentary on Mark when you give a donation of any amount at renewingyourmind.org. So, are our petitions to the Lord ever a bother?

Here's Dr. Sproul. Mark includes his narrative of Jesus' ministry in Galilee, and we're told that again He crossed to the other side, and when He arrived, He was once more surrounded by multitudes of people who wanted to gain something from close proximity to Him. And we read that one of the rulers of the synagogue, who's named here in the text Jairus. Now as a ruler of the synagogue, He had some status among the people of Israel, but He was not a rabbi.

He was a layman, and the synagogue ruler was in charge of taking care of the building and ordering all of the services that took place within the synagogue building. So He was a man of some expertise and some status, as I said, in the community, and now He comes and He falls at the feet of Jesus. Once again, we see somebody who is facing a hopeless crisis and when they come to Jesus, they come to Him begging, falling at His feet, begging with all earnestness that Jesus might intercede into their crisis and cure whatever the problem may be.

And this was His cry, my little daughter lies at the point of death. I'm sure that the translators struggled to render the Greek there with the phrase, at the point of death. You know we have a science called eschatology, coming from the Greek word eschatos, which means last or final things.

And in the Greek, in this text, that's the word that is used here. So that when Jairus says, my little girl is at the point of death, she's at her eschaton. She is at the very end. She is at death's door. She's breathing her last.

It's not that she's very sick and in intensive care, but she is literally on her deathbed. And if you don't do something, Jesus, she will surely die. But He said, come, lay your hands on her that she may be healed.

And if you do that, Jesus, she'll live. So Jesus went with Him, and a great multitude followed Him and thronged Him round about. And now at this point in the narrative that Mark introduces of this crisis for the father of this little girl, there's an interlude in between the beginning of Jesus proceeding to the home of Jairus and His actual arrival and ministry to the little girl, because Mark tells us what happens on the way. Now there was a certain woman who had a flow of blood for twelve years, twelve years unceasing hemorrhage. Now that may seem bad enough to us living in the Western world in the twenty-first century, but if you have time this afternoon, go back to the Old Testament and read for yourself the fifteenth chapter of the book of Leviticus, and read the detailed instructions that are there with respect to ceremonial cleansing, with respect to being declared unclean.

We've already examined the misery of those in whom leprosy was discovered, how they became outcasts, pariahs in the community. Well, the Old Testament law also required that somebody in this condition was considered unclean as long as the hemorrhage lasted. She could not marry. She could not be part of the worshiping community of Israel. She was as unclean as a leper. No one was allowed to touch her or her clothes, or they would become unclean. So the woman doesn't just suffer from physical misery, but she suffers from social and religious misery because she's been banished from the presence of the people of God.

The very fact that she's in this multitude involves her active disobedience to the Old Testament ritual law. But Mark goes on to describe her misery in an even greater category. Not only is she physically miserable, not only is she socially miserable, but she's utterly destitute because she has spent every penny that she owned, done everything that she could to get relief from the hemorrhage. She's gone to doctor after doctor after doctor spending her last cent, and the doctors made her condition worse.

Now, let me just pause here for a second. I don't think that the doctors in the ancient world wanted to make her condition worse. They just did not have the medicine, the knowledge, and the tools at their disposal to give her relief.

Her condition in medical terms of the first century was incurable, and her condition only got worse. The amazing thing to me is that she would have any hope left, that she would even go out of her way to try to get in touch with Jesus. But people who are in this kind of physical distress, beloved, will almost try anything to get relief. And so she said to herself, if I can only touch His clothes, I shall be made well. Now in one sense that's commendable. In another sense it isn't. One of the widespread beliefs of the day was that if you could get close to a great man or to a healer, touch their clothes, that would be all it would take.

So there's a little bit of magic mixed into her hopes and aspirations for healing. But that was commonplace in that day. Of course, nobody would believe anything like that today. Ministers on television aren't going to give handkerchiefs to you if you give so much money. Nobody would really buy that today.

I'm sorry to say they do, because the idea is if you can get some part of the clothing of a famous person or of a powerful person, it'll have magic in it. And so whatever her reasoning, this woman said, I don't care. This is my last chance. This is my last resort. Jesus, I've heard so many great things about Jesus. Maybe He'll have time for me. He doesn't have to stop. He doesn't have to lay His hands on me. Let me just touch His clothes.

If I can just get close to Him, maybe that will do it. And so she made her way through the crowd, and even though the law of God forbade her from touching anybody, she stretched forth her hands and touched Jesus. And when she did that, instantly the hemorrhage stopped, and she knew it. She felt it in her body that she was instantly healed of that affliction. You notice when Jesus heals people, it's never really over a protracted period of time, and Jesus never makes a circus display out of His healing like some of the alleged healers on television. Somebody touches a person who says they're deaf, and then He walks away and He says, can you hear me now? Can you imagine Jesus putting on a display like that when He heals some poor person?

No. This woman knew instantly that she was healed, but Jesus also knew instantly that something had happened. Mark tells us in Jesus, immediately knowing in Himself that power had gone out of Him, turned around in the crowd and said, who touched my clothes?

Now let me just comment on this briefly. Get rid of some of the mythology that surrounds our understanding of Jesus, who we believe is verihomo verideus, truly man, truly God. And the great heresy that the church had to fight against in the fifth century included the monophysite heresy that involved deifying the human nature. In the incarnation, the divine nature loses none of divine attributes. The divine nature stays divine, and the human nature stays human. The human nature is not deified, and the divine nature is not humanized.

And I say this for a reason. Jesus touching His human nature was not omniscient. He didn't know everything. You see, later on in this gospel says He didn't know the day or the hour that the Father had appointed for the consummation of the kingdom.

Well, here we have Jesus in His human nature manifesting the limitations of that nature. He didn't know who touched Him. He knew somebody touched Him. He felt that much, but He didn't know who, and so He stopped. Now remember, He's on the way to minister to a young girl who is at the point of death and maybe by now has even died. Every minute counts. He doesn't have time to delay, but He stops, and He turns around and He said, who touched Me?

And if ever the disciples are irritated by their Master, it's now. What do you mean, who touched you? How are we supposed to know who touched you? There's a thronging multitude pressing and bumping up against you every second, and you want us to discern who it was that touched you?

I know somebody touched Me because I felt the power go out of Me. So really He's not calling on the disciples to reveal who it was that touched Him. Now He's calling on the person to identify themselves.

He's looking at the group. Which one of you people out there did this? Who came up to Me and touched Me and took that power from Me? But the woman, fearing and trembling, knowing what had happened to her, came and fell down before Him, and listen to this, and she told Him the whole truth.

When she came into the presence of Jesus and Jesus asked what was going on here, there was no partial truth, no half-truth. She could have said, I'm an outcast. I broke the law of Leviticus. I'm not allowed to touch you, but I was unclean. I was desperate.

She could have just eliminated that, and she could have just said, here, I did it. But you see, Jesus wanted the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. And that's what this grateful woman gave to Jesus. Jesus, I touched you. I'm unclean. I've just made you unclean according to the law because I touched you. I hope you'll forgive Me, but I was desperate because I've had this for twelve years. I went to every doctor I knew of.

They took my money, and they made me worse. I'm sorry, Jesus, but I just knew that if I could touch you, I would finally be healed. She told Him the whole truth. And what did He say to her? Here's what He didn't say. He didn't say, daughter, your touch has made you well. Nor did He say, daughter, my garments have made you well. No. He said, your faith has made you well.

What did He mean? This wasn't name it and claim it. There was no intrinsic power in her faith. Beloved, her faith was not the efficient cause of her healing. Jesus was the efficient cause of her healing. But how did that cause get plugged into this woman? What we would say is the instrumental cause of her cure. It was faith. Just as in our justification, we're not justified because there's any inherent righteousness in our faith that God says, because you have faith, I will save you.

No. The faith is called the instrumental cause of justification because it is that tool or that instrument by which we grab ahold of Christ. Christ is the efficient cause of our justification. So in this case, it was Jesus and His power that healed the woman. And He says, go in peace and be healed of your affliction.

Now the go in peace could be seen simply as a standard customary valediction like goodbye. But I think it means so much more than that to this woman who hadn't had a moment's peace in twelve years. That valediction now takes on whole new meaning to her as Jesus speaks tenderly to her, and He says, go now, not in fear, not in trembling, not in misery, but in peace. And the current significance of the verb here is saying, and you are healed permanently. And as soon as this happened, while He was still speaking, somebody came from the ruler of the synagogue's house and said, Jairus, it's too late.

Your little girl's dead. And then they raise a question to Him, why trouble the Master anymore? At one point in your life, beloved, do you say to yourself, why trouble God anymore?

Everything that I feared would happen has happened. Why should I bother praying now my husband died, my child died, I'm dying? Why bother now? There is no time when you stop troubling the Lord, because it is never any trouble to Him to hear you cry and to wipe away your tears. But from an earthly perspective, it was too late.

The girl was dead. As soon as Jesus heard the word was spoken, He said to Jairus, hey, I know what they said. Don't trouble the Lord. It's too late. Don't be afraid, Jairus. Don't give in to your terror. Just keep on believing. Trust Me, Jairus. You came. You were on your face. You asked Me to do this. When your daughter was at the doorstep of death, now she's entered that doorstep. It's not too late.

You just believe this isn't over yet. And so He stopped the crowd from falling, and the only ones He permitted were Peter, James, John, the inner circle. He came to the house of Jairus and saw a tumult, and the crowd of those who wept and wailed loudly, you know who they were?

They were the pros. It was the Jewish custom that when there was a death in the family that you hired professional mourners to rent their garments and to wail and to dance and to weep and to signify that this great calamity has befallen a household, and the size of your professional mourning committee was determined by economics. But the rabbis had this requirement that even if you were a peasant, if you had a death in the family, you were required to at least hire two players of the flute and one female whaler.

That's if you were dirt poor. You had at least two flutes and one lady screaming, dancing, and wailing. But this was the ruler of the synagogue.

So you had an old team of these professionals, and you can imagine the noise as He approaches the house. They're already yelling and screaming and dancing and weeping. But when Jesus came, He said to them, hey, be quiet. Why make all this commotion and weep? The child is not dead.

The child is sleeping. Now Jesus is not saying, you missed it. She just is comatose. That's not what He meant here. He's not saying these people had been at deathbeds time and time and time again.

There was no doubt among the crowd or among the family that this little girl had breathed her last. Jesus is using sleeping as the euphemism that was commonly used to describe somebody who was dead. Notice in verse 40, and they ridiculed Him. The professional criers now became amateur laughers. They laugh at Jesus. They turn the tears off instantly, and they start giggling. They start making fun of Him.

Oh yes, He's just sleeping. That's all. And many had put them all outside. He took the father and the mother and those who were with Him. He entered where the child was. He took the child by the hand.

This is the second time in just minutes that according to the Old Testament ritual law, Jesus had been defiled by the touch of an unclean woman and by the touch, His touching a corpse. But He took her by the hand. And just like Christ gives His power by the sound of His voice, as I mentioned before that just as God brought the whole world into creation by the sound of His voice, by fiat, by imperative, just as He brought Lazarus out of the tomb by command, He speaks to this little girl in her state of death, holds her hand, and says to her, little girl, arise. Immediately the girl arose, and she walked. Get up out of bed. She said, wow, I was dead. It's going to take me a while to get my legs. No, all of her strength returns to her instantly. She walks around the room, and Jesus says to the parents, look, don't go broadcasting this everywhere. People won't understand it. But here's what I want you to do.

Prepare her something to eat because she's hungry. The power of the resurrection, the power over death, all of these things converged in the touch of Jesus in the home of Jairus. This is the Lord in whom we place our trust for life and for death forever. You're listening to Renewing Your Mind, and that was a sermon from R.C. Sproul from the Gospel of Mark.

We have no way of knowing the difficulty that you may be facing today, but we do have the privilege of pointing you to the God who cares and the God who comforts. These sermons form the basis of Dr. Sproul's line-by-line study of Mark, and it reminds us of the amazing work Jesus accomplished while He was on this earth. Our resource offer today is something that I hope will be a helpful study companion for you as you dig deeper into Mark's Gospel.

It's R.C. Sproul's expositional commentary on this Gospel, and we'll send you the hardcover edition when you give a donation of any amount before midnight tonight at renewingyourmind.org or by using the link in the podcast show notes. If you prefer the eBook edition so that you can search and read on your tablet or smartphone or if you live outside of the U.S. or Canada, we have that available for you at renewingyourmind.org slash global, but both offers end tonight at midnight, so show your support of Renewing Your Mind and respond now while there's still time. Thank you. When we return next time, we'll conclude this series in Mark's Gospel, so don't miss that sermon on Jesus at Nazareth. That'll be next Sunday here on Renewing Your Mind. We'll see you next time.