The Bleeding Woman and the Dead Girl

[0:00] Father, some of us here are maybe pretty pumped about some answered prayer. Some of us, Father, are really sort of, maybe some of us have given up praying because we don't even think it works.

[0:14] And some of us are crushed with not getting the answer that we had hoped and prayed for from you. And Father, you know the conditions of all of our hearts. And we ask that your Holy Spirit would move in a gentle but deep and powerful way in each one of us, that your word might be brought home to us, that the gospel might be made even more dear and clear to us, and that we might be so gripped by the gospel that we live each day for your glory.

[0:42] And this we ask in the name of Jesus, your Son and our Savior. Amen. Please be seated. So the Bible text today has nothing to do with real life.

[0:57] It's just completely and utterly religious and has nothing to do with any of the questions or experiences. It only deals with why God answers some prayers and doesn't answer other people's prayers.

[1:10] It only deals with sickness and death. It only deals with social isolation and shame. Nothing that any of us ever have to struggle with or experience. So it would be a great help to me.

[1:21] Actually, you'll see that it's the second week of our summer series. It's Real Jesus, Real Miracles. And this is our second week. And we'll be looking at a story in the book of Luke. In fact, interestingly enough, it's actually the story which is painted there.

[1:36] You can sort of see it, Jesus and the young girl. So it would be a great help if you turned in a moment to this famous story. But before we do that, I want to just put up, if you could put up the first point, that would be very helpful.

[1:49] Probably every week that I do one of these miracle stories, I just want to make this very simple point. Is Luke is claiming, this is what Luke is claiming. If you go back and you read the beginning of the gospel, if you go back and you read his other work, if you notice all of the way he phrases time-shifting things, which often is not once upon a time, but it happened next.

[2:14] The claim that Luke is making is that this is a true story about Jesus and it's also a miracle. That it is something that could not happen unless God acted into our world and brought about something that only God could cause.

[2:30] That's what a miracle is here. And so this is Luke's claim. True story about Jesus and a real miracle. And when we start looking, it's going to be at Luke chapter 8, verse 40.

[2:43] Just to sort of catch you up on it. When we read Luke, we're reading an ancient biography of Jesus. It was written by a pagan doctor who was an adult convert.

[2:54] And Luke himself never knew Jesus physically. He wasn't an eyewitness of any of the events in this story. But what we see here is that Luke decided that he would go and do research after he'd become a Christian.

[3:07] Maybe he's also recounting the journey that led him to become a Christian. He interviews eyewitnesses. He looks at official records. And out of that, he frames this ancient biography of Jesus written at a time when many eyewitnesses to the events were still alive and could have commented on it, disagreed with it, rebutted it, whatever.

[3:29] And there's no record of that. And so that's sort of the context. And we're going to start reading in verse 40. And here's how it goes. Now, when Jesus returned, the crowd welcomed him, for they were all waiting for him.

[3:42] And there came a man named Jairus, who was a ruler of the synagogue. And falling at Jesus' feet, he implored him to come to his house, for he had an only daughter, about 12 years of age, and she was dying.

[3:55] And just sort of in the flow of the book, what Luke has just previously recounted is that Jesus has crossed the Sea of Galilee to the other side of the sea into a pagan land.

[4:09] And he spent some time in this pagan land. And now he's returned to the Jewish side of the Sea of Galilee. In fact, he's returned to Galilee, which is sort of a bit of a mixed area. But he's returned there.

[4:20] And the crowd was waiting for him to return. And when it says, and a synagogue is, and since it's now, we only have synagogues.

[4:31] Synagogues weren't, in a sense, part of God's, there's no Old Testament passages that describe how synagogues are to be functioning. Because in the Old Testament, it was expected that you would go to the temple to do the sacrifices.

[4:44] But during a long period of exile, when they were away from the temple and there was no temple, this habit of having a place, a community center that was also a place of the reading of God's word and of prayer and of instruction and support developed.

[4:57] A little bit like what we would now call a church. And so in Galilee, there is a leader of this particular place. He has a 12-year-old daughter. And in the original language, it's very clear that she's at the point of death.

[5:10] She's at the point of death. And so Jairus is probably unbelievably excited that Jesus has returned. He would have known about how Jesus has already raised.

[5:23] He might have heard about the fact that Jesus earlier has raised a person from the dead. He's heard of Jesus' many miracles. He might have heard of the official who had a son. And Jesus was able to heal him from a distance.

[5:35] And now Jesus is back. He goes to Jesus. This all sense of dignity is put aside, just as it would be for one of us if it was our 12-year-old daughter who was dying. He throws himself at Jesus' feet and says, Jesus, come and heal my daughter.

[5:48] She's at the point of death. And now one of the things, it doesn't talk about in the text, but it's sort of interesting, is that he might have expected Jesus just to do what he had done with the official son.

[6:02] Pick up Jairus and say, okay, Jairus, come stand up here. She's healed. Just you walk back and she's healed. That might be very much what he's expecting. But Jesus doesn't do that. He doesn't do that.

[6:14] And that's an important little detail in the story to notice, as well as all of the ways in the story. You'll notice that Jesus doesn't react to each person. He always acts with love and power and authority.

[6:27] But he never acts the same way. It's not like dealing with a banking machine that always has just pre-programmed responses to what you do. He treats us as an individual. And, you know, in heaven, we'll maybe find out why it is that for the official son, he did that type of miracle.

[6:42] And I think it's in Luke 5. And why here in Luke 8, he treats Jairus in a different way. And just as in heaven, I'll find out why it is that he treated me one way and he treated Don a different way.

[6:53] And he treated Terry a different way. And the meaning of our life and why it was so important to us that God acted in one way rather than another. The Bible doesn't make all that clear as to what his reasons are.

[7:05] It just shows that he treats people in a different way. And in this particular case, he says to Jairus, in a sense, I will go to see your daughter. Well, what happens? Look at the last part of verse 42.

[7:18] The next paragraph, if you're looking up there. Oh, maybe it doesn't have that. Yeah, it does have that. As Jesus went, the people pressed around him. In other words, they were right up touching him. They were like he was like moving through a crowd.

[7:30] And there was a woman who had a discharge of blood for 12 years. And though she had spent all her living on physicians, she could not be healed by anyone.

[7:43] She came up behind him and touched the fringe of his garment. And immediately her discharge of blood ceased.

[7:54] Now just sort of pause. Remember, Jesus is going to Jairus' house. His daughter is dying. He's having to walk through a crowd. And in the midst of a crowd, there's this woman that comes up and touches the fringe of his garment.

[8:10] Now, some of you might or might not know this. Probably what most scholars now think that she had a, I don't know if I'm going to pronounce this correctly, a uterine hemorrhage.

[8:20] That's probably what she had. And she had it for 12 years. It meant that there was bleeding from her uterus. And whether it was continual or just intermittent, it would have been leaving her anemic.

[8:32] And the regular, unusual amount of flow of blood, and not just regular in terms of like a once a month if she was younger, but just intermittent but sort of constant flow of blood would have meant that from a Jewish perspective at that time, she was unclean.

[8:49] And we're not going to go into a little bit that much, but every single one of us knows a little bit about what it means to feel unclean. And she was unclean.

[9:00] And in their system of thought, every person she touched, she made ritually unclean, which would have meant that there were sacrifices and all that sort of stuff. So what she had done is she's pushing herself through the crowd, is she's making every single person she touches, she's making them ritually unclean.

[9:17] She herself would have lived a very isolated life because she would have had to be constantly separated from other human beings because of her ritual uncleanness. And in the original language, when it says that she touches the fringe of his garment, it's actually a very technical word.

[9:37] In the Old Testament law, one of the outward signs that you wanted to observe all of the law was that you had certain tassels, a fringe, put on your garment.

[9:49] And what she touches, even though she's ritually unclean, is she touches that which symbolizes that Jesus is a religiously observant Jewish man.

[10:04] So later on, if she hadn't been healed, the crowd would have realized that she'd, that in fact, actually what she did was quite wrong for most of their thinking. She touched, she touched the part that showed that he desired to be ritually clean.

[10:19] And she touched that to make him unclean. She would have done a faux pas. But lo and behold, she, not thinking about that, she just has this belief that Jesus will heal her.

[10:31] And she touches him and she's healed. And we all know that sometimes people can think they're healed when they're not.

[10:42] But in this case, what probably has happened is not only does she feel that the blood stops, but there would have been persistent pain and the pain goes away. The pain in her uterus, all of a sudden the pain stops.

[10:55] She has a sense that the bleeding stopped. And because when Jesus heals, and we see this in all of the ancient biographies, when Jesus heals, he doesn't just sort of barely heal a person, she's healed.

[11:07] Her anemia and her weakness would have been gone. All of a sudden, she would have just felt well. All of us here who aren't anemic, we don't even experience feeling well, in a sense, because it's natural to us.

[11:25] And all of a sudden, for the first time in 12 years, she feels well. She doesn't feel anemic. And the pain is gone. And she has a sense that the bleeding has stopped.

[11:38] It happens in an instant. Now, there's a very surprising thing, though, that happens. In verse 45, we see it. And Jesus said, who was it that touched me?

[11:52] He doesn't know who touched her. He doesn't know who touched him. Like, he literally, this isn't like an object lesson. This isn't like when he says to the disciples in the feeding of the 5,000, and how are we going to feed them.

[12:04] And that's sort of like he's giving them a test question. In this case, he literally doesn't know the answer. He has no idea who it is that touched him. He asked that question. Verse 45 again, and Jesus said, who was it that touched me?

[12:18] And when all denied it, Peter said, Master, I don't know if he puts the word duh, but the crowd surround you and are pressing on you.

[12:28] Like, there's all sorts of people touching you, basically. But verse 46, but Jesus said, Someone touch me, for I perceive that power has gone out from me. And when the woman saw that she was not hidden, she came trembling and falling down before him, declared in the presence of all the people why she had touched Jesus and how she had been immediately healed.

[12:51] And Jesus doesn't rebuke her. He speaks to her with great affection. He says, daughter. He claims her as part of his family. Daughter, your faith has made you well.

[13:06] And in the original language, your faith has made you well can also equally be translated as your faith has saved you. Go in peace. Now, some of us are a bit troubled by this.

[13:19] And I could well imagine that those who are non-Christians, you know a little bit about what Christianity is, be very puzzled as to how it is that Jesus, like, don't Christians claim that Jesus is God?

[13:30] How is it that he asks a question? How is it that he doesn't know the answer? How can he be God and ask a question? If you could put up the point, Andrew, that would be very helpful. Well, Jesus is fully human.

[13:43] He asked questions. See, one of the things which is so powerful about stories is that stories help us to enter into truths that we can maybe express as a doctrine, like when we said the creed, fully man and fully God.

[13:59] And okay, well, we can say that. But a story helps us to enter into what that means and experience it and know it in a deeper way. It shapes us. And the fact of the matter is, is if Jesus never asked a question, how on earth could you possibly believe that he's human?

[14:14] Like, how could he be human if he never asked a question? It's one of the essential features of being a human being, is to be able to ask questions. It's one of the things, interestingly enough, in totalitarian states and dictators, what they want is they want to stop people asking questions because they want to make you less human.

[14:32] The state wants to crush you. And if they want to crush you, they say, no more questions. You're not allowed to ask questions. Just trust the glorious state, how wise it is.

[14:44] In the Soviet Union, dissidents were sent to be brainwashed or dealt with by psychiatrists because they couldn't understand the glory of the revolution.

[14:58] They'd ask questions. Well, why is it if the revolution is so glorious, why is it that people are starving? Why is it that people are punished? And, well, if you, no questions are not allowed.

[15:10] So we can't look at Jesus and say, well, Jesus was human but never asked a question. You know, he's not here today. Liam. Liam went through a period. He was really, really, you know, he's still cute, but he was very cute.

[15:22] And after service, he'd come and follow me around and ask me questions. Why do you do that? And I'd give him an answer. Why? I'd give him an answer. Why? Give him an answer. Why?

[15:33] And should I just say, because. I don't know. Like, at some point in time, you just can't answer endless whys. All of you have had young kids, many of them at some point in time, they go through a phase, they ask why, why, why. Well, to think that Jesus, as a four-year-old, never asked the question why.

[15:48] Like, how could he be a kid? Like, Jesus didn't emerge out of the womb and immediately speak three or four languages. He would have, like, babbled.

[16:01] He had to learn. And this helps us to feel it and experience it. You see, if you read all of the Gospels together and you read the rest of the New Testament, what you understand is this, that Jesus was fully human.

[16:13] He asked questions. He got tired. He got hungry. He had to sleep. And what it is, is that if Jesus needed to know something that a human being wouldn't normally know, God reveals it to him.

[16:26] Because it's, in a sense, every time you see Jesus knowing something that he couldn't know, it's a way for you in the story to enter into the intimacy that he had with his heavenly father and the trust he had of his heavenly father, that his heavenly father would provide for him, including knowing when he needed to know.

[16:47] So Jesus asks a question. He doesn't know the answer. The woman comes, and he speaks to her with great peace. But, remember, Jesus is now spending time, and who knows how long it took, maybe 10 or 15 minutes with the woman, not just as brief as it was here.

[17:10] Maybe he was asking questions for 10 or 15 minutes before the woman finally was brought to the front. And you can well imagine that Jairus is hopping up and down on both feet because he's so anxious.

[17:22] If he was sitting, his leg was probably going like that because he has a daughter who's on the point of death, and Jesus is spending time with this woman, this woman, not his daughter.

[17:33] I'm sure he'd say, yeah, yeah, I like that woman. But my daughter, my 12-year-old daughter, she's on the point of death.

[17:45] And what happens? Well, terrible news. Look at verse 49. While Jesus was still speaking, while Jesus was still speaking, someone from the ruler's house came and said, your daughter is dead.

[18:05] Do not trouble the teacher anymore. Now, we just need to pause here for a second, camp on it for a second. This describes this room.

[18:15] I'm guessing that if we were to have an open mic for people to share prayer requests, I'm guessing there's a couple of people who could say, I'd really like to share with you how God has dramatically answered a prayer for me this week.

[18:33] I'd be surprised if there's not a couple of you who could get up and share within the last week, within the last month, some dramatic answer to prayer. And at the same time that they're sharing, and maybe after they share, we all clap and they go back to their seat, a few high fives.

[18:52] But at the same time, in this very same room, there are people who are praying their heart out and God is not answering their prayers the way they want. They prayed for the job.

[19:05] They didn't get the job. They prayed for a relationship. They didn't get the relationship. They prayed for a child. They didn't get the child. They prayed for a good answer from the doctor.

[19:16] They didn't get the good answer from the doctor. They prayed for their wayward child. Their wayward child has gotten more wayward. We could go on. Verse 49, the woman's going back to high fives.

[19:32] And in the same crowd, Jairus is crushed. That's every church service that you ever attended in every Christian community.

[19:44] Right here in the text. So what happens?

[19:55] How does the story continue to resolve itself? Well, let's look at verse 50. How does Jesus respond to this? And by the way, just before that, you can well imagine, can't you?

[20:05] And this is, this again is so much for many of us. Can't you just imagine that Jairus is saying, Jesus, if you had just not stopped for that woman, my daughter would be well.

[20:23] My daughter would be well. So the story continues. Verse 50. But Jesus, on hearing this, that the girl is dead, says to the man, do not fear, only believe, she will be well.

[20:45] That word once again, well, can also be translated as saved. And in verse 51, and when he came to the house, he allowed no one to enter with him except Peter and John and James and the father and mother of the child.

[20:59] Peter, John, and James are three of the apostles, three of the disciples. And all were weeping, verse 52, and mourning for her. But he said to the crowd, do not weep, for she is not dead, but is sleeping.

[21:15] And just so you know, it's a very ancient metaphor, but Jesus is using a metaphor for death. He knows she's dead, as the rest of the story will show.

[21:27] He knows she's dead, but he's using, it's a whole other sermon about why there could be for Christians a metaphor of death as sleeping. But that's what he's doing.

[21:38] But the crowd reacts in a different way. Look at verse 53. And they laughed at him, knowing that she was dead. Just sort of pause here for a second.

[21:54] Once again, doesn't this describe life? Like if you think about it, if people who are walking by on the street knew that there were people in here who believe that Jesus is still alive and that they can talk to him and he will answer their prayers, they will laugh at us.

[22:12] They'd laugh. They wouldn't laugh. They're Canadians. They maybe wouldn't laugh if we were right with them. But what they're going on off to their friends to have some brunch or some dim sum or whatever, they'll say, all those stupid people in there praying, what a waste of time.

[22:26] Like that's the real world. Once again, so Jesus is in a room with the five of them. Nobody has any faith. There's a dead girl. Verse 54, but taking her by the hand, he called saying, child, arise.

[22:44] And her spirit returned. She got up at once and he directed that something should be given her to eat. In other words, she's so healthy that she not only becomes alive again and she's so healed that she can get up out of the bed and she's so healed that she's hungry.

[23:06] And he directed that something should be given her to eat and her parents were amazed but he charged them to tell no one what had happened. Now, Jesus recalls her spirit and she's alive.

[23:19] Now, some of you might say, this is just a couple of coincidences. You know, they're not very sophisticated back then. They don't know about science and, you know, maybe just Jesus startled her and, whoa, she's not actually dead and she wakes up and, you know, maybe it's just one of those things where, you know, she was about to get well all by herself and it's just a bit of a coincidence.

[23:41] And, well, I mean, we can't entirely answer that except to say this. The other day, I was in a coffee shop and I overheard a young guy explain to an older guy what he did for a living. He was an engineer and he was an engineer who designs computer systems and to protect against cyber attacks.

[24:02] And he gave, I know there's some computer engineers here. I'm just going to give a couple of things that I overheard him say because the rest of it I'd get so wrong that the engineers and the computer people around us would be going like this.

[24:13] But just a couple of things. He gave the analogy. He said, so we have algorithms that can track when something anomalous happens. And so, like something might be that all of a sudden a person accesses their banking record at three o'clock in the morning and there's an algorithm.

[24:29] They know that's an anomalous thing that that person, George Sinclair, never accesses his bank at three o'clock in the morning but nothing necessarily happens just because of one anomalous event. But what we're working on is when there's a cyber attack, we're working on recognizing when there's a certain type of pattern of anomalous events within a certain time period that indicates that there's an attack and then having a way of responding to it.

[24:56] And that's the algorithm that we're working on. And that's a little bit of the question here. You could say, well, okay, so Jesus, there's this true biography which is written about Jesus and it's an ancient biography and it records this and it records this and it records this and yes, it might be a little bit of anomaly that just at the moment that she touches his Jesus that whoa, all of a sudden she's better.

[25:22] It's just odd coincidence but another odd coincidence about this and if you go back and you read the rest of the book of Luke and it's an odd coincidence that this just happened and this just happened but at some point in time you have to wonder if it's an attack, if it's a cyber attack, if it's an invasion.

[25:41] That the only way to understand what's going on is that there's something systematic. So if you could put up the next point, Andrew, that would be very, very helpful.

[25:52] So here's what's happening in the course of this story. What Jesus does, only life himself can do what Jesus does. Only life himself can do what Jesus does.

[26:03] Only health himself can do what Jesus does in this story. Remember, one of the things which is so powerful about stories is that the stories help us to understand.

[26:20] We can take it very abstractly that God creates all things or that Jesus is God and comes and enters in. And those are just some doctrines and for some of us we love statements like that of logic and of great verbal precision and abstract and we love it.

[26:38] But you know what? For many of us, how we come to understand these is we come to understand them by reading stories. And it's not just enough to understand that God is God but that what the Bible says is this.

[26:51] In all Eastern religions, in all Eastern religions, the fact that you and I exist is a result of a primeval tragedy. All things were one. It was just like there was an ocean and all of a sudden difference started to happen.

[27:06] And it's a tragedy. And now there's difference. And now there's you and now there's me. And all of life is at the end of the day ultimately a tragedy which ends by the reincarnation coming to an end and then comes oblivion.

[27:20] The drop of water merges with the ocean. And in what is basically the atheistic worldview which is on one level the basic worldview of most of the modern West.

[27:32] It's on one level taught in schools that everything that came to be is just a result. There's always just been matter and there's always just been energy and matter and energy start to interact in scientific ways in such a way that eventually life was produced.

[27:47] But life came out of nothing other than processes. Life has no inherent meaning and at the end of it you will just die. And the Christian story is very different.

[27:58] The Christian story is that from all eternity the Father loved the Son and the Son loved the Father and the Holy Spirit is on one level both another person but He's also the actual love which eternally flows from the Father to the Son and from all eternity there was a life.

[28:17] God the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit three persons one God He is alive and out of life and out of love God creates. And the tragedy of sickness and death and our fallen creation comes out of our prideful rebellion against God.

[28:34] But life is what life comes out of. And so what the Bible here is picturing is that life well could you put up the next point Andrew?

[28:46] What we see in this miracle is that life is invading now we would say it in the past tense life has invaded His dying creation to put things right and deliver His fallen image bearers.

[29:01] Life has invaded His dying creation to begin to put things right and deliver His fallen image bearers. There used to be a man who came to the church for a few years he was a great old guy his name was Jacques and he was from France and he I believe he's passed away now and he grew up in a small little area in France very close to the coast and one night during the Second World War him and his family heard gunfire very close to the house just in the lower field not the field right by his house but just the lower field they heard gunfire and screaming and they stayed inside the house they were under Nazi occupation and they just stayed in the house but the next morning when it was light he went out and he found the body of an American

[30:02] GI in his lower field. He found the dead body of an American soldier in Nazi occupied Europe and he didn't realize that but later on in the day in the next day he discovered that that was a paratrooper who had come in the night before D-Day and that at the same time that he was discovering the dead body the Allied forces had landed very close to where he lived.

[30:33] There was an anomaly of a dead American GI in his lower field but it wasn't just an anomaly it was an indication that the invasion had begun and that's what every miracle is in the gospel it is evidence that the invasion had begun.

[31:00] In this case last week I talked about how the creator himself had entered invaded his dying or fallen creation here in a sense to understand that God is life life has invaded his dying creation to begin to put things right and deliver his fallen image bearers.

[31:18] this is not just an anomaly it is an anomaly that indicates the invasion has begun and we know that it will come to an end. But some of you might say well George I don't have faith to believe something like this I'm too skeptical I'm too broken you know it's just too hard it's just too hard to believe something I just can't possibly have faith or belief in it.

[31:45] Well the story actually has some things to say about that whole response of not having you know faith or enough belief. See part of the problem is that we say we don't have enough belief we don't have enough faith.

[32:00] you know in our culture or just we do know that actually belief and faith is very very important just in general it's very important.

[32:14] You can't have human relationships and you can't have love relationships if you don't have some degree of trust. I've met people who've been so beat up by life just so betrayed and beat up by life their parents in many cases literally beat them up and abused them and in some tragic cases they were just beat up by the judicial system by the foster system by their siblings and they are just so beat up by life that they can no longer trust anybody at all virtually trust nobody at all and they live very very very very isolated lives and miserable lives because the fact of the matter is you can't have a friend you can't have a wife or a husband you can't actually even go to the police or go to a contractor you can't go to a bank if you don't have some degree of trust so on one level in our culture we understand the real importance of love but the problem in our culture is that we want to create make it look as if somehow or another that well you know how many movies talk about how you just have to have trust you just have to believe you just have to you just it's as if almost trust or belief is a type of a power that you have and if you have this type of power if you just believe in people if you just believe that Santa is going to come if you just believe that things are going to be right then things are all going to be right but if you can't go sort of all the way to the other extreme because on one hand we can understand that there's things that happen that take away any ability to love or any ability to trust but we're also aware of the fact that in our culture there's lots of things and people and movements that just aren't trustworthy like the abused woman that just keeps trusting her husband and she goes back and he just continues to abuse her and she goes to the hospital she goes to the shelter and then she goes back and he beats her up and she just keeps trusting him what the

[34:42] Bible says is the Bible talks about importance of faith obviously but it always puts it at a second level if you could put up the next point Andrew that would be very helpful who or what you place your faith in matters far more than the power or purity of your faith who or what you place your faith in matters far more than the power or purity of your faith and and that's what the Bible is showing us right here the Bible is trying to portray to us how spectacularly trustworthy Jesus is in a way that will start to elicit our faith the Bible doesn't come to us and say just believe just have faith do these exercises take meditation take drugs take therapy so that you will build your faith what the Bible says is that who or what you put your faith and trust in matters vastly more than the amount of faith that you have

[35:55] I might have next to no faith whatsoever that if I get on a plane that I will arrive safely at the other end of my destination but it doesn't matter how strong my faith is what matters is that the plane is trustworthy it's always the object which matters more and that's why what the Bible does here in this particular story is that it's trying to portray who Jesus is and why he is so completely and utterly trustworthy but some of you might say George okay you're that's very interesting but what about this part that you described of the unanswered prayer are you just saying that really I mean Jairus he didn't have any faith he didn't have any faith and Jairus has his daughter raised from the dead but that's not my experience of prayer like I just seem George to be going through such a long period of time where my prayers aren't being answered in the way that

[36:58] I hope and this story doesn't solve that it solves it in one very important level another level it doesn't what it does is it doesn't tell me why it is that sometimes when I pray what I pray for happens and sometimes when I pray God just says no and sometimes when I pray he takes a long time to answer so long that sometimes I don't even remember that I originally prayed for it and sometimes when I pray he answers a prayer but in a very very different way than I'd expected and it's only later on that I realize that he answered in different ways and this text doesn't explain to me why it is that those particular things happen in my life but what it does is it helps me to press into the fact that Jesus is very trustworthy you see if the story just ended here and the Bible just ended here I'd be a little bit confused about the object of faith and the power of my faith and why

[38:09] God does things and why he doesn't do things but this story is part of a longer story and in this longer story it's moving up to a culminating point and the culminating point is Jesus dying upon the cross and the way we are to understand the story is that when we come to that point in the story and in the very next chapter Jesus is going to in fact begin to explain to his disciples that the entire reason that he came was to die the entire reason he came was to die to die for others and so it comes that when he finally dies with it's valid for us to ask ourselves how is it that a man who could raise dead people to life would ever allow himself to die upon the cross how is it that a man who was just touched by a woman and she's instantly healed how is it that such a person could ever die on the cross and what on earth could it possibly mean like how could that even physically happen if he can make a dead person come alive how is it that even physically he could die if he can just touch somebody in their life how is it that he could how is he could die what does it mean to have health die on the cross what does it mean to have life die on the cross and the answer to the gospel is that the only thing that it can explain that life would enter to die for the dead is love is love no amount of human power can kill life no amount of human power could kill

[39:58] Jesus if he just wanted to continue to heal no amount of human power he chose to die for you for me if you could put up the point Andrew what we see in the story is that Jesus dies a slave's death he's bleeding it means he's unclean he dies on a cross which means he's cursed he's dying on a cross which means he has the status of a slave and he dies condemned and Jesus died a slave's death unclean cursed and condemned so that you might become his child clean blessed righteous and eternally alive and this we receive by faith Jesus died a slave's death unclean cursed and condemned so that you might become his child clean blessed righteous and eternally alive I don't make myself alive in Christ he makes me alive I don't make myself clean he makes me clean I don't make myself blessed he blesses me I don't remove the curse he removes the curse I don't by having a powerful faith have a life that will survive death he calls me when I am dead like he called

[41:24] Jairus his daughter he takes my hand when I am dead he calls my name when I am dead and his call and his touch seen completely and utterly pictured upon the cross is what makes me clean makes me blessed makes me alive makes me righteous makes me as child and so I do not know why it is that God answers my prayers and does not answer my prayers the way that he does but what I know is that he's for me he's for me at the deepest possible level that will go into eternity he is for me at the deepest possible cost to himself and so I can live God of gratitude please stand let's bow our heads in prayer

[42:32] Jesus if some of us are willing to be honest with each other right now we stop praying because we think it's not worthwhile cynicism has poisoned our soul and if we're honest father some of us don't believe we're being cynical we're just being more aware we're more realistic but father we don't want to confess that a cynicism and a lack of faith has started to permeate who we are and robbed us of prayer and father some of us are struggling with prayers that aren't going the way we want and we don't know why some of us father have had fantastic prayers and father we thank you that we thank you that Jesus is for us at the deepest level that because he is our savior and our lord you want us to pour out our heart to you in prayer to pray for big things and for small things that you delight in our prayers that you hear them and we know father we know lord Jesus that you answer them that you approach them out of the deepest possible love for us a love that was deeply costly for us a love that saves us so father we ask that you would both increase our honesty in prayer and our boldness in prayer and increase within us father more and most importantly of all to be gripped by the gospel in such a powerful way that we will understand what it is that Jesus has done for us who he is that we pray for and his great love for us and all these things we ask in the name of Jesus your son and our savior amen your heart in prayer for us a builds for us and our weer and our minds of Jesus

[44:42] God radiant and above me and our honor Joker thank you and that's his firm person for us to pray and share for us with our God who have loved and��� races and his myth the aurait and the onr FAE