Desperate faith, Luke 8: 40-56

As we look at this final section of chapter 8, we see two miracles recorded by Luke that Christ did, following His return from across the Sea of Galilee.  But as we look at these  miracles, we must ask ourselves why Luke records these two particular miracles at this juncture.  Obviously, these were not the only miracles that Jesus did, there are many similar ones that are recorded elsewhere, and there are many that were not recorded specifically, but were in general described as Jesus going around healing and doing miracles.  So why then are we given these particular miracles?

Well, I can help answer that by telling you the negatives first, and then we will look at the positive answers.  I will tell you what they are not. .  They were not put there to give us a methodology for duplicating similar miracles for ourselves.  They were not given to give us a technique by which we can eradicate illness and death in the Christian life here on Earth.  That may be a popular concept among the snake oil salesmen and  faith healers that you find on television, but it is not a teaching that is born out in scripture.  Paul was a man of great faith, yet he was given a thorn in his flesh that he asked 3 times of God that he would be healed from.  And yet God did not heal him, but said, “my grace is sufficient for you.”  Instead of healing him, however, God gave him a constant traveling companion who was a doctor, the beloved Luke the physician who attended to Paul.  And in fact, at the end of Paul’s ministry, as the Apostolic age was coming to a close, it is evident that Paul was unable to effect the healing of even those close to him, such as Trophimus whom he left sick in Miletus, and his own spiritual son, Timothy who he recommended should drink  a little wine for his stomach ailment.  So it is an unbiblical doctrine that as Christians we can be healed from every sickness if we just have enough faith.

So Jesus did not come, as some theologians would have us believe, to banish sickness in Israel.  A good example is John 5 when Jesus came to the pool of Bethesda and healed the man waiting for the water to be stirred up.  And it says that He healed this man, yet the scripture tells us that the pool area was crowded with a multitude of the sick, blind, lame and afflicted.  Yet Jesus heals only one of them. 

Furthermore, there were undoubtedly tens of thousands of people who died in Israel during the three years of Jesus ministry.  And yet we have record that Jesus raised only three from the dead:  the widow’s son in chapter 7, Jairus’s daughter in this passage, and Lazarus. 

Just last week we looked at Jesus going across the Sea of Galilee to deliver a man possessed by demons.  And when He had delivered Him, He left the region and came back to Capernaum.  There would have surely been many more people in that region who could have profited by being healed or delivered.  And yet Jesus healed just this one demoniac.  There was a strategy behind Jesus’ ministry, and it wasn’t to provide free health care for Israel, or to do away with slavery in the Roman Empire, or to provide clean water or any other number of sociological possibilities.  Rather, Jesus came to seek and to save those that were lost.

So Jesus did not heal every sick person in Israel, nor raise every dead person from the grave.  But He did perform certain miracles strategically, in order to demonstrate His power as God and illustrate certain characteristics of salvation and the Kingdom that He wanted to teach.

For instance, in Matthew 9 when the men lowered the paralytic man on a stretcher through the roof in the house where Jesus was teaching, first Jesus told the  man that His sins were forgiven Him.  And there was a shocked response on the part of the religious officials there at the audacity of Jesus to infer that He could forgive sins.  That was a characteristic of God and they obviously did not accept that Jesus was God.  So Jesus response was to say, “which is easier to say, your sins are forgiven or rise up and walk?  But so that so that you may know that the Son of Man has the power to forgive sins, I say to you, rise, take up your bed and walk.” See, the whole point of the miracle was to teach that He had power to save sinners.  Jesus said in Luke 19:10, “For the Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost.”

So then we understand that Jesus did  miracles to illustrate characteristics concerning the Kingdom of Heaven, and to demonstrate that He was the Son of God.  And He also does miracles such as healing to demonstrate His compassion.  Jesus has compassion for the lost.  That is who He came to save, those that are lost and without hope.  And Jesus shows us God’s compassionate nature in not rejecting any that would come to Him.

Now in this passage we see two completely different types of people come to Jesus for help.  They are given to us as a contrast in extremes.  We see Jairus,  who had a 12 year old daughter that was deathly sick.  And you see the woman, who had a hemorrhage for 12 years. We are given a contrast of types of people who would come into the Kingdom, from the ruler of the synagogue to the woman who was an outcast.  He contrasts a person who was extremely religious with a person who was excommunicated from the synagogue.  A person of wealth and prestige, contrasted with a person who is financially destitute and an outcast from society.  A person who would have been considered a pillar of the community against a person who was considered unclean. Regardless of which end of the social spectrum you come from, there is but one access to the kingdom of heaven, and that is through Jesus Christ.  They are given to us as an example that for all people, from the richest to the poorest, there is only one way to salvation and that is through Jesus.

Those are the contrasts, but let’s consider their similarities.  One, they were both desperate.  Jairus, in spite of his exalted position in the community, in spite of his wealth and in spite of his religion, has death come knocking on his door.  His 12 year old daughter is dying.  And those of us that are parents can understand his desperation.  If you have ever had something like that come near your house, then you know that you would give anything to have your child delivered.  And yet, sooner or later, death comes to us all.  It cannot be avoided, it is inevitable.  But we can certainly emphasize with this man’s desperation that her life would not be cut short.  Jairus comes to Jesus and begs Him  to come to his house and heal his daughter. 

But as Jesus is going with Jairus, who must have been frantically urging Jesus to hurry, this woman who had a hemorrhage for 12 years comes up through the crowd and touches the hem or the fringe of Jesus robe and their progress is delayed.   Luke says she could not be healed by anyone.  Mark says in chapter 5 that she “had endured much at the hands of many physicians, and had spent all that she had and was not helped at all, but rather had grown worse.”  So she came up behind Jesus in the crowd thinking that if she could just touch his cloak she would get well. 

She too was desperate.  Having a hemorrhage for 12 years not only left her weak and sick and bankrupt, but according to Jewish regulations, she was considered unclean.  She was prohibited from even touching anyone.  Maybe that is why she chose to touch the hem of his robe.  She came secretly because she was ashamed of her condition.  It prohibited her from entering the temple or the synagogue, and so she was a picture of a sinner who is estranged entirely from God.  She too was desperate.  She was broken physically, spiritually and even financially.

Both of these people shared a similar characteristic.  They were desperate in their plight.  Jairus was facing the death of his child.  Death is always related to sin in the Bible.  It is appointed unto man once to die and after that the judgment.  It was appointed all the way back in the Garden of Eden that if you disobeyed God and ate of the tree you would die.  Death is the wages of sin.  Jairus recognized that death was knocking at his door and he knew that Jesus was the only answer. 

And the woman with the hemorrhage is a picture of sin.  Her sin had cut her off from life, it had separated her from Jewish society, and it had  separated her from God.  She was  unclean and she was desperate to be made whole again.  And she knew that if she could just get to Jesus He could make her well. 

Listen, desperation is a necessary  ingredient when you come to Christ.  You have to come to the point of realizing the desperate nature of your condition.  Most people are not saved because they come to Christ only as an insurance policy against something they really aren’t very concerned about.  That’s why we buy insurance, don’t we?  We don’t really think that we are sick now, but just in case, we are willing to pay a little for insurance.   Most people are like that coming to God.  We aren’t too concerned about death, it seems far away.  We aren’t too concerned with our sin, it really doesn’t seem that bad.  So we are willing to pay a little tribute now and then to God for insurance purposes.  But if we had a true understanding of our bleak situation, we would realize how hopelessly lost we are, and we would come to God willing to do anything, willing to pay any price, go to any lengths to be made whole.  That kind of desperation is necessary.  Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount, that you need to be poor in Spirit, recognizing your spiritual bankruptcy, and you need to hunger and thirst after righteousness with the desperation of a beggar.

I remember 30 years ago I was living in California after running away from the Lord for years and living like the prodigal son, and finally one day I wrestled all day long with the Lord under conviction that I needed to come back to him.  Finally, about sunset I locked myself in the garage because my roommates were partying upstairs, and I decided I was going to get right with God.  But as I began to try to pray after all those years of running, I think a certain part of me recognized that I was just going through the motions sort of mechanically, and it seemed as if my words were bouncing off the ceiling.  They weren’t going anywhere.  And I thought for a moment that perhaps God had abandoned me.  Maybe I had gone too far.  Maybe God had shut the door and I would be lost forever.  And when I thought that, I can tell you that suddenly I became desperate, my voice became frantic, and the tears began to flow uncontrollably, and I desperately wanted to know that God was there, and that He would answer me.  I am glad to report that God did hear me, and He was faithful to deliver me.  But I learned that desperation can be a good thing.

These two people had another similarity as well.  Besides their desperation, they had saving faith. Hebrews 11:6 says, “And without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is and that He is a rewarder of those who seek Him.” Listen, faith isn’t a monkey wrench whereby we manipulate God’s will to our demands.  Faith is the means by which God answers our prayer to have righteousness transferred to sinners.  Ephesians 2:8, “For by grace are you saved through faith, and that not of yourselves, it is a gift of God, not of works lest any man should boast.”  Faith is recognizing that you are desperate, that you have nothing to offer God in exchange, that you are lost and hopeless, and that only by the grace of God, the mercy of God, can you be forgiven and be made whole. 

Jairus had faith that Jesus could heal his daughter.  And yet as Jesus delayed with the woman, his worst fears came true.  A person came running up to him and said, “your daughter has died, do not trouble the teacher anymore.”  For many of us that would have done us in.  Our faith would have foundered right then and there. And perhaps Jairus’ faith started wobbling too, because Jesus says, ““Do not be afraid any longer; only believe, and she will be made well.” And so Jairus continued with Jesus in faith that Jesus could bring His little girl back to life.  His faith wasn’t founded in his feelings, or even his emotions, but in the promise of Jesus.  I can only imagine the grief he was feeling as they journeyed, knowing that his daughter had died. But he continued in spite of his feelings.  Matthew makes it clear that even knowing that his daughter was dead, he insisted that Christ should come and raise her from the dead.

And the woman also had faith.  In faith she believed so strongly in the power of Christ that if she just touched the hem of his garment in secret that would be enough to heal her.  And when she did so, she was immediately healed. 

Now let’s look at one final application for both of them.  Remember that the Holy Spirit is illustrating through Luke’s account the qualities of the Kingdom of Heaven.  And so there is more here than just a healing and off you go on your merry way.  That is another characteristic of the modern Christianity.  We have a crisis and we want Jesus to heal us, or deliver us.   And when the crisis is resolved for better or for worse, we go back to the normal routine of our lives and nothing really is changed.  But these examples are illustrating saving faith. 

In the case of Jairus, Jesus finally comes to the house and it’s complete chaos.  The professional mourners have already assembled, so they must have been waiting in the wings, or it’s taken a few hours to get to Jairus’s house.  And when Jesus comes into the house he tells the mourners to get out. “Stop weeping, for she has not died, but is asleep.” And the mourners laugh at him, knowing that she was dead.  Mark 5, “But putting them all out, He took along the child’s father and mother and His own companions, and entered the room where the child was. Taking the child by the hand, He said to her, “Talitha kum!” (which translated means, “Little girl, I say to you, get up!”).  Immediately the girl got up and began to walk, for she was twelve years old. And immediately they were completely astounded.”

Now what can we learn about the kingdom from this?  It’s teaching the power over death for the believer.  Jesus almost always refers to death as being asleep.  And I don’t believe He did so to try to be coy, but He was illustrating a spiritual reality by a figure of speech referring to the physical. The Kingdom of Heaven, or the Kingdom of God, by definition is a spiritual kingdom. It is the Kingdom where Christ rules His subjects in their hearts.  It’s a spiritual kingdom.  And so when He talks about being asleep,  He is referring to a spiritual state.  In physical sleep, the body is asleep but the mind is still active.  So likewise, in death,  spiritually speaking the body is dead or sleeping, but the spirit is alive. I could say much more concerning this, but time will not allow it.  However, I think it is the key to understanding verses such as 1Cor. 15:51, “Behold, I tell you a mystery; we will not all sleep, but we will all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet; for the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed.”  

And also in 1Thess. 4:15, “For this we say to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive and remain until the coming of the Lord, will not precede those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive and remain will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we shall always be with the Lord.” Both passages speak of the resurrection from the dead, when those that are asleep, that is physically dead but spiritually alive, are raised from the dead and given a new, imperishable body.

Luke tells us in this chapter verse 55 that her spirit returned.  Which prompts the question, returned from where?  I submit to you that her living spirit returned from the spiritual realm of the dead.  Jesus describes this realm in a story in Luke 16 about a beggar named Lazarus who died and was in Abraham’s bosum and the rich man whose gate Lazurus once laid at also died and was in Hades, and there was a great gulf fixed between them. I believe that Jesus is describing an actual place in which the living dead are in Paradise and the eternally dead are in Hades. 

But I don’t want to lose you this morning on things that are somewhat ambiguous or controversial, but I will say that I am not idly speculating.  I am merely relating what scripture says.  But the fact remains that physical death is being spiritually asleep, not indicating soul sleep as some would falsely teach, but a figure of speech indicating bodily sleep yet the spirit is very much alive.  One day at the resurrection we will be given a new, glorified body, but our soul and spirit is eternal and is living even in death.

Jesus tells the parents to give the girl something to eat, and He instructs them not to tell anyone about the whole ordeal.  But of course, it is difficult to keep things like resurrection quiet.  Maybe Jesus told them that so they wouldn’t write a book.  Everyone who has a dream nowadays wants to write a book and make a million dollars from it.  And most of it is just plain nonsense that is at odds with scripture.  But what I really think the reason was that Jesus wasn’t interested in getting more notoriety about His healings.  He was already crushed by the crowds to the point that He could barely operate.  And those people that came to see signs and wonders weren’t necessarily coming for the right reasons.  Jesus would say to those crowds eventually in Luke 11:29, “This generation is a wicked generation; it seeks for a sign, and yet no sign will be given to it but the sign of Jonah.”  Jesus didn’t want them coming for the miracles, but for repentance. That was the sign of Jonah.

So the Holy Spirit is teaching in the account of Jairus the nature of death for the citizen of the Kingdom of Heaven.  Jesus has the power over death, not just physical death, but spiritual death.  We are all appointed to die physically, unless Jesus comes back in our lifetime, but we need to be more concerned with where we are going to spend eternity.  Because spiritually we will be in either Paradise or Hell.

Now the application from the woman with the hemorrhage adds another aspect required to  entering the Kingdom of Heaven. After the woman was healed, Jesus says in vs. 45, “Who is the one who touched Me?” And while they were all denying it, Peter said, “Master, the people are crowding and pressing in on You.” But Jesus said, “Someone did touch Me, for I was aware that power had gone out of Me.”

Understand something here that is important.  Jesus isn’t wondering who touched Him, wondering who had somehow stolen His mojo without His approval.  She was healed not because she touched a robe with magical powers, but because Jesus healed her.  And if Jesus healed her then He knew her.  He knew her faith, He knew her condition,  He certainly knew her name and  He knew what she looked like. 

But what Jesus wanted her to do was to confess Him publicly.  Jesus doesn’t want secret disciples.  He wants His disciples to be a witness, to be a light on a hill, not a candle under a candlestick.  Jesus is illustrating the teaching that He just gave a day or two prior, just before they went over to the other side of the Galilee.  Look at vs. 16 of this chapter.  Jesus said, “Now no one after lighting a lamp covers it over with a container, or puts it under a bed; but he puts it on a lampstand, so that those who come in may see the light.” 

Jesus told Jairus not to broadcast Him raising his daughter from the dead because He didn’t want to be inundated with thrill seekers.  But He does want this woman to tell what happened to her, because He wants her to be a witness to the transformation that has happened inside her.  She was the perfect picture of a sinner, and so she is a great example of a true convert.  And confession is an essential part of conversion. Jesus said in Matt. 10:32, “Therefore everyone who confesses Me before men, I will also confess him before My Father who is in heaven.” 

Also Rom. 10:9 emphasizes that confession is vital, “that if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.”  And that is really what is happening here in this story.  The woman knows that He knows, and so she confesses what she has done and her faith in Jesus to heal her.  And look at what Jesus tells her in vs. 48, “And He said to her, “Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace.”  “Made you well” is actually from the Greek word sozo, which means saved.  Jesus says, your faith has saved you.  Go in peace.  She now had peace with God.  That is another characteristic of a citizen in the Kingdom of God.  She has been made a daughter of God, a child of God by faith.  And because of what Christ would do on the cross, she would have peace with God.  There was no more enmity between her and God.  She had been transferred from the kingdom of darkness to the kingdom of God, she was a child of God.  And that is the only way to have  true peace.  Peace is not found in the absence of war, or the absence of death or illness, but peace is found in reconciliation with God. 

That peace, not as the world gives, Jesus said, do I give to you.  And it is available for those with desperate faith, who will embrace all that Jesus is, confessing Him as Lord, and renouncing their sin.  And in that kingdom of God, we find eternal peace, spiritual life that endures through even death by becoming part of the family of God.