Just Believe
Mark 5:21 – 43
What is faith? What is Biblical Faith? Someone once asked Billy Graham that question. He said first, you must believe that God exists, and that he loves you so much that he sent Jesus to save you. Second, you must completely trust in salvation though Jesus Christ. Put your life into his hands and believe Jesus not only can save you but that he will save you.
Martin Luther said, “Faith is a living, bold trust in God’s grace, so certain of God’s favor that your Faith would risk death a thousand times trusting in it, believing in it”. So, biblical faith is complete and overwhelming trust and belief in God, for the wellbeing of your entire life, physical and spiritual – past, present and future.
Biblical faith is not a leap in the dark. It’s not hoping that there is something or someone that will be there to catch you when you fall. Biblical faith is a profound trust in an omnipresent God who is there when you need him and who is not silent. Faith is the ability to Just Believe that God is in control of your life and your world.
Our lesson today is a story within a story. As our lesson begins, we see that Jesus and the Disciples have gone back across the Sea of Galilee, this time without the violent storm from last week. They are back in Capernaum, on the Gentile side of the sea. If you remember when He was there before, the crowds that came to hear him teach and heal were so large that he had to climb into a boat and sit in it just off shore and speak because the crowds, wanting, needing to be near Him, were pushing him into the water.
In His return, even though Jesus had only been gone a couple of days, the large crowd gathered there to see him. They would have seen them coming by boat and begun to gather by the shore.
Mark tells us that one of those people that was waiting there for Jesus was a man by the Jairus, one of the synagogue leaders. Jairus was a man of great privilege: respected, well-off, we see later the description of his house and that he had hired hands. He was a religious leader in the area, but his privilege does not exempt him from pain, or fear.
Despite all his privilege, he’s unable to help his 12-year-old daughter, who was sick and getting sicker. She had grown worse and worse until she was at the point of death. Jairus, even though he was a Jew had heard of the healing miracles of Jesus and wanted to believe in those stories. In the end, he’s just like every other parent who their child to Jesus looking for God’s intervention.
When he came face to face with Jesus, Mark says he “fell at his feet” to plead for help. Mark says “he pleaded earnestly”. “Come”, he pleads, “and put you hands on her so that she will be healed and live”. So, the scripture says, Jesus went with him. So begins our first of two intertwined stories.
But remember there was a pressing crowd that was around Jesus from the time that His boat landed. They were not about to let Jesus leave without them, so the crowd went too, following Jesus and Jairus toward his home.
Among the throng of people was a poor, suffering woman. For twelve years, she suffered a constant flow of blood. As those of you that went through Leviticus with us in Bible Study know, her flow had made her ceremonially unclean, for 12 years, preventing her from worshiping in the temple, keeping her away from any husband she might have had, removing any opportunity to have children and making her a social outcast.
She is destitute and she is desperate. As she sits in the street, she sees the crowd coming her way, and the one whom she has heard about, the Healer is among them. She thinks, “He can help me.”
Despite the crushing crowd, the woman is determined to make her way to Jesus. She has heard about the healing miracles that Jesus has performed. If she can get to Jesus, like Jairus has, then Jesus could heal her too. He can save her from the ostracization that she been through over the last 12 year, give her life back to her.
But the crowd was too large and getting to Jesus was difficult and so she makes a different plan, a bold plan. If she can get close enough to touch His clothes, she believes that she will be healed. So she pushes through the crowd and comes up behind him, and reaches out her hand, and touches His cloak. Immediately her bleeding stopped, she felt that she had been freed from her suffering. She Just Believed and she was made well after 12 years!
Despite being in a hurry to get to the daughter of Jairus, Jesus stops in His tracks, immediately aware that healing power had gone forth from him. Jesus turned around in the crowd and said, ‘Who touched my clothes?’ His disciples said to him, ‘You see the crowd pressing in on you; pushing you along, how can you say, “Who touched me?”
But He knows that this touch was different, life changing power has been transferred. He looks all round to find the woman because he wants to talk to her. Then the woman, knowing what was happened to her, came back in fear and trembling, fell before him, and told him the whole truth about her illness, her life and her faith and belief in the healing grace of Jesus. Then Jesus said to her, ‘Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace and be healed of your disease.’
It wasn’t the touch that made her well, but rather it was her faith, her ability to Just Believe in the healing touch of Jesus that made her well. In a crowd of that size, lots of people touched Jesus, intentionally or unintentionally that day without changes to their lives. So it wasn’t proximity to Jesus that made her well but rather her faith and her belief that made her well.
There are people that think that closeness to Jesus, being a member of a church, attending a church sometimes. People saying that participating is enough, that holiness will just seep into your life and you being. But that simply isn’t true. For the formerly bleeding woman, the cure for her illness was not touching Jesus but rather because of her faith and for Just Believing in faith that Jesus could make her free from her pain. She touched Jesus’ cloak, but Jesus touched her, body and soul, and made her well.
In the meantime, Jairus has to be beside himself with concern for his daughter, He needs Jesus’ help. He may even feel for the woman, but he needs to get Jesus to his house. Then as they are about to continue on “some people” came from Jairus’ house and told him that his daughter was in fact dead, it was too late, that there was no reason to bother the teacher anymore. But Jesus, overhearing the conversation tells Jairus “Don’t be afraid for your daughter, Just Believe! Have Faith!
The group hurries to the home and when they arrive Jesus see a commotion, people crying, grieving and wailing loudly. He goes into the home and to give them hope, he tells them that there is no need for the despair because the girl is not dead as they suppose but rather is sleeping. But they all laughed at Him, not knowing who He was nor the power and authority that he had over death.
He sends the unbelievers out of the house and took the Jairus and the mother of the child along with Peter, John and James and go into the room of the girl. Jesus takes the little girl by the hand and says to her “Little girl, I say to you, get up!” and immediately the girl rises and begins to walk around the room.
Everyone in the room, other than Jesus, was astonished! With his daughter raised from the dead and despite the disbelief of the household servants, their laughing and jeering at the notion that the child was only sleeping, the echoes of Jesus’ words just minutes before must have begun ringing in the ears of Jairus, Just Believe!
Hear the Good News my friends…..
Our scripture today said “Ignoring what they said, Jesus told the synagogue ruler, ‘Don’t be afraid; just believe.’”
These two people in our lesson today could not have been any more different from each other. Jairus was rich, powerful, well respected, and influential. The woman destitute, helpless, ostracized and powerless. She had suffered with her condition for more 12 years, the entire life span of Jairus’ daughter’s life. But they had one thing in common, a desire to believe in the power and authority of Jesus Christ over creation itself.
The world often whispers in our ears, you can’t get to Jesus, He is too far away from you, there is too many people between you and Him. Or it is too late, it is all over, there is no hope, why even try.
But God always whispers otherwise. God voice to us is always “Don’t be afraid” Don’t be afraid of failure, don’t be afraid of the future, don’t be afraid of rejection Whatever our fears and pains are, God tells us “Don’t be afraid, Just Believe.” When the woman reached out to touch His cloak she did so in faithful hope and her body was healed. But Jesus wanted to see her face to face to tell her that her she was no longer who she was, she was now a different person, touched in her soul forever.
Jairus needed to overcome not just his concern for his daughter but to reject the voices telling him quit, to give up, it is all over, but it wasn’t. God had heard him. It was easy to believe when the girl had some hope to recover, but it was impossible to believe now that she was dead. But it was for this moment that Jesus had waited to help Jairus’ faith grow from healing faith to resurrecting faith.
Friends no matter how long it takes, 12 years or more, confidently anticipate the healing touch of Jesus to heart, body and soul. Don’t listen to the world to say that it doesn’t matter, it is too late, just quit because it matters in eternity, there is always time and never, ever quit…..Just Believe! Amen.