One of the pastors here, we are going to be reading today from
Matthew Chapter 9, verses 18 through 26.
So if you would stand with me one more time, we're going to
read the Word of God. And at the end you, you will say
this is the word of the Lord, Amen.
While he was saying these things to them, behold, A ruler came in
and knelt before him, saying, My daughter has just died, but come
and lay your hand on her, and she will live.
And Jesus rose and followed him with his disciples.
And behold, a woman who had suffered from a discharge of
blood for 12 years came up behind him and touched the
fringe of his garment. For she said to herself, If I
only touch his garment, I will be made well.
Jesus turned seeing her. He said, Take heart, daughter,
your face has made you well. And instantly the woman was made
well. And when Jesus came to the
ruler's house and saw the flute players in the crowd making a
commotion, he said, go away, for the girl is not dead, but
sleeping. And they laughed at him.
But when the crowd had been put outside, he went in and took her
by the hand, and the girl arose. And the report of this went
through all that district. This is the word of the Lord,
Amen. You guys can have a seat.
We are continuing in our Book of Matthew series where we call it
our King and his Kingdom. Because as we see in this
scripture, not just in the gospels but in all of the
scripture that God is the King of the universe.
Jesus is that God made flesh who came down to bring about his
Kingdom on earth and his will to be done.
We prayed that prayer. He prayed that prayer and he
taught us that in, in the sermon on the mound in Matthew chapter
6. And he is king.
That means that he has authority.
He is sovereign over all. And, and that means even over
sickness and death in, in, in chapters 8 and 9, we've been
seeing Jesus doing all these different miracles, casting out
demons, healing people. Today we're going to see that he
even raised the little girl from the dead.
And we're, so we're focusing on kind of his authority over his
creation and created beings and, and his authority to bring about
his goodness and his mercy and his grace in our lives.
Now you're going to laugh at this title, but today's title is
this dual desperate daughters delivered from disease and
death. Often times preachers try to
use, you know, kind of the same letter throughout all their
points to to make it memorable. And I couldn't do that in my
points, but it really worked with this title.
There are two women in this story that God delivers and
heals. It's it's amazing.
And it's interesting because these two stories have nothing
to do with each other, by the way.
These two women don't actually know each other.
And we have this, this narrative, this story, this is
real history about when Jesus was walking on the earth 2000
years ago, how things happened in a moment of time where
someone confronts him. Gyruss is his name, his daughter
is sick and he says come heal her.
And so he's going to to to heal the daughter.
And on the way, another woman confronts him and she gets
healed as well. That's called an intercalation,
by the way, when a story like that where you have two
different stories kind of joining, but they actually don't
have anything to do with, they don't have anything to do with
each other, but yet are making the same point.
That's one more proof that God the Holy Spirit was working and
he wrote this down and that these aren't coincidences, but
there's something supernatural happening when Jesus was walking
the earth and when God caused these words to be written down
in this way. So let's get into this.
I have 5 points I want to look at in these two women's lives
and how there's these similarities to both of their
stories in this narrative. And the first one I see is this
desperation. There's both a story of
desperation in the Father and in the woman.
Let's look at the first verse again.
It says while he was saying these things to them, behold, A
ruler came in and knelt before him, saying, my daughter has
died, but come and lay your hand on her, and she will live you.
You don't quite necessarily see it, but you can just imagine as
if when you're reading something, you have to put
yourself in the place of the, the person that we're reading
about, right? You've got to kind of get in,
get in your imagination what it would have been like.
Now, this guy, he was a, this specific gospel doesn't tell us
his name, but in Mark's gospel and Luke's gospel, it tells us
he was a, a ruler of the synagogue, a Jewish place of
worship. His name was Jairus.
And this man comes desperate for his daughter, his daughters just
died. And, and he's, he's been hearing
about the commotion and, and the things going on, the power of
Jesus for him. He wouldn't have really been a
follower of Jesus because he was very high up with the religious
leaders in Judaism. But what we see here is
desperation causes him to leave his faith that he grew up with,
his faith that he was holding on to in order to go to God
himself, who we believe to be the true faith, the only one who
actually has the power to raise anybody from the dead anyway.
Like you see this man's faith come from desperation.
Now that's often how God works, by the way, we are so prideful
that we won't actually come to him until we know we need him.
God uses that he used that in my own life, right?
I, I struggled with addiction for many years of my life in my
teenage and my early 20s and, and I grew up Christian and I
had a heart for the Lord. But when I was off on my, you
know, prodigal sin moment in that lifestyle, I wasn't really
thinking about God, nor did I care about him that much.
He was in the back of my mind, but when I became desperate,
when I started to realize I my life was spinning out of
control. I didn't have control over what
I was doing and even the choices I was making anymore because my
sin was so heavy. I finally got to a place of many
would call it rock bottom, where the only place I had to do was
look up. I dug myself such a hole that
all I could do was look up. I was desperate for Jesus, and I
mean you. We can Fast forward and say we
can. We know that He delivered me.
Otherwise I wouldn't be standing here today preaching this word
to you. And I know there's a similar
story in your own life. If you haven't gotten there yet,
I pray you do get there. But I pray it doesn't have to be
that serious or that deep. Maybe you can put down the
shovel right now and look up instead of digging that hole in
your sin. But sometimes it's not sin.
It's it's despair over life circumstances like this guy.
Maybe someone's sick, maybe you've had someone pass away.
Maybe there's some medical complications or, or, or
something that's going on with financial issues in your life or
your job. And and you've gotten to this
point of desperation and this guy is a model of what we should
do. This guy was very high up in his
in his faith and religion. People look to him for answers,
but this guy dropped his pride and was even willing to say,
maybe I don't know everything. Maybe what I've always believed
my entire life is nothing compared to the truth about who
Jesus is. Now let's look at the the the
other woman in this scenario in this story in verse 20.
And behold, a woman who had suffered from a discharge of
blood for 12 years came up from behind him and touched the
fringe of his garment. For she said to herself, if I
only touch his garment, I will be made.
Well, this, this is something that's, I mean, traumatic for
this woman for 12 years. It says that she has had a
discharge of blood. This would have been really a
really difficult medical complication for her to deal
with. So much so back in that day that
she probably didn't have much of A social status, probably
couldn't go out and and do the things that a lot of other
people in her life were doing. This also meant that she
probably couldn't have children. This meant that she probably was
outcasted from her, her, her faith community, because in the
Old Testament, there was there were these laws and rules about,
about people who suffered from this type of thing, especially
when blood was involved, that there were certain rituals that
had to take place in order for her to be restored.
And so this woman would have been basically alone and, and
helpless. And actually, Luke 843 in his
version of the story, adds that there it's said that she had
spent all her living on physicians and she could not be
healed by anyone. She had tried everything she
could to get out of her situation and nothing was
working. Again, I think that's kind of
like us, if we're honest, right? When we are desperate, we don't
always run to Jesus first, right?
We start looking at everything else.
ChatGPT, right? How many times do you have a
question or you're struggling with an issue or medical issue
and you're like, I'm going to ask Google what he thinks?
And we don't we don't even call it it anymore because it has
either a male or a woman voice. It's all, it's become like a
human friend to us, right? Almost like a higher power.
You should be, you know, you should be cautious about how
much you use it and what you think about it.
I'm not saying I'm against, you know, AI and the Internet, but
how you use it and what it will start to become possibly an idol
in your life. Maybe.
But what else do we do? We run to doctors.
We run to, to and fro everywhere.
The new the next new supplement, the next new medication, the
next new diet. We want to solve a problem,
right? And we are desperate and many of
us are are are very have ingenuity or ability to to
figure things out. But man, if you're a Christian
here today, shouldn't we be going to Jesus first, Not last
you ever heard those people say like, oh, we've tried
everything. Now all we can do now is pray
right after I've exhausted all the human options, then I'll go
to God. But the very definition of a
Christian is someone who follows God.
God is is is is is who they trust.
They submit their whole lives to him.
They believe there's not, it's life isn't just natural, but
it's there's this supernatural, there's the spiritual element to
to our lives. Wouldn't we go to the one who
has all the power and all authority first?
That's what we see in these two stories.
There's a desperation to go outside of the norm, go outside
of the cultural, the natural, the the internal pride of our,
our education or our background or our experience and go to
someone who can truly help us and that's Jesus Christ alone.
So that's the first similarity that I see.
And I already alluded to the next similarity then is
uncleanness. Let's go back to these verses
again. Verse 18.
While he was saying these things to them, behold, A ruler came in
and knelt before him, saying, My daughter had just died, but come
and lay your hand on her, and she will live.
And then Fast forward to verse 25.
But when the crowd had been put outside, he went in and took her
by the hand, and the girl arose. Now in the Old Testament as I
was talking about, there are these certain laws and one of
them was when when someone passed away, when someone died
that automatically made that person like you weren't supposed
to touch a dead body. Actually Numbers 1911 it says
whoever touches the dead body of any person shall be unclean 7
days. This was God's holiness standard
in the Old Testament so that people would be sanctified for
worship and coming into the temple.
There were cleansing rituals and a dead body made it so someone
was unclean 7 days. So they had to wait from going
to do certain ordinances and and sacrifices.
There were some special laws. If you were, you were the
closest of kin, you could go, you know, bury them and take
care of that. But you weren't supposed to
touch a dead body. And here Jesus is being asked to
go touch a dead body. So there's this uncleanness.
And then in the next story, again, we have a woman who had
suffered from a discharge of blood for 12 years, came up
behind him and touched the fringe of his garment.
The same thing with this very circumstance that I alluded to.
That person would also be unclean for seven days.
And both of these people are going outside of their religious
beliefs in order to be touched by Jesus.
A healing touch in hand by Jesus.
They had to believe that he had the power not only to heal them
and save them, but to not be tainted with their uncleanness.
And that's really kind of the point I'm trying to make here
is, is kind of like earlier, we saw Jesus healed A leper and
lepers were banished outside of the camp because people were
afraid of contracting the disease of leprosy.
Nobody ever touched them. And there were laws about that
as well. But what we see here is the
compassion of Jesus on humanity. This is is symbolic.
It's a real story. But what we need to glean from
it is that Jesus is willing to come to the outcasts of society,
the unclean, the sick, the unholy, the ones that are
unworthy to come to worship. How many times have we heard
people say, I won't darken the door of a church?
If I went in there, the whole thing would burn down or I'd be
struck by lightning because I'm so evil.
I'm such a Sinner. I've never had a relationship
with God. Well, I'm sorry to let you know,
but all of us are on equal ground when it comes to the
Lord. We're all sinners.
We're all unclean like this dead body or like this woman.
We come ceremonially unclean to God.
If you think about God, God is we, we say it all the time,
holy. What does that mean?
It means set apart, sanctified. He is completely other than us,
set apart from us. He has no sin, completely pure,
completely perfect. And so anything below him is
unworthy. Anything, any person that
doesn't measure up to that standard is unfit to come to
him. And we as human beings, the
Bible says, is our unclean. The prophet Isaiah in the Old
Testament said it this way. We've all become like one who is
unclean. All our righteous deeds are like
a polluted garment. We all fade like a leaf and our
iniquities like the wind, take us away.
Interestingly, without getting too weird here, but this story
of the woman who's had the discharge of blood for for 12
years, back in the olden days, they, you know, they had to have
garments and and rags that were, you know, cycled to be cleaned.
And this is what Isaiah is talking about when it says a
polluted garment. Literally what he's talking
about is that same menstrual rag that this woman would have had
to keep recycling over and over again and cleaning over and over
again. We all are polluted.
We all are unclean. Why?
Because of our sin. Now let me give you a little bit
of a theological lesson about Christianity.
It it begins with men and women were created in a good perfect
relationship with God. They had their free will to make
decisions and choices and and when they chose in the beginning
to go against God and break His law and commandment in Genesis
chapter 3 from then on. The curse of sin was imputed to
all human beings. We all have been in inherited
because by the way Adam and Eve were the only ones like
supernaturally created by God. Every human being after Adam and
Eve was made by procreation. So we've inherited their fallen
DNA. Often times people question why
did God make a bunch of sinners? No, God made two people and they
were in in good standing with God and they chose to go their
own way. They chose to follow false
teaching from Satan and to to to follow pleasure to follow what
they saw was a better life than what God had offered, which
plunged them into sin. God said you will surely die,
but not only us, but every human being after now we've inherited
that same thing. The spiritual fall of humanity
is where all of us are and things are broken and things
don't work right and we don't last long and disease comes in
and not only that but evil in our hearts.
From a very young age. The Bible says I was conceived
in iniquity. David says that in one of the
Psalms. That means that at conception we
inherit the the sin nature that all humans are plagued with.
And now you don't have to go too far to see it, right?
If you have kids, you know, like at, at the very youngest of
ages, you don't have to teach them to be disobedient, do you?
You don't have to teach them to be mean.
You don't have to teach them to be selfish.
They do it naturally. They do it naturally.
And one of my, my favorite theologians that passed away
last year, he said, Bodhi Baakum.
He said it's the grace of God that that children are grown or
they start off very small because they're evil enough that
if they were full size, they'd probably try to kill us.
Isn't that right? I mean, I have a toddler at home
and he hits US from time to time, you know, and if if he was
bigger, it would hurt. I know that sounds kind of
harsh. I'm being, I'm being truthful,
but I'm trying to make a point here.
The point is, is that all human beings are following.
We don't start in some neutral state.
We are unclean. Therefore this what this also
means then is not only are we born in this state, but we
continue to contribute to our sin.
And if you are honest, you like sin, you and I like sin.
I'm not just speaking down to you.
If you're honest, we we like our pleasure, we like our sin.
We like the thing that God said don't do and we don't like doing
the thing that God said to do. And we just need to own the fact
that. And then when we think somehow
when we do a good thing, like help old lady across the street
or, you know, give a donation to the, the, the nearest school or,
or whatever it is, we think somehow that earns us some kind
of points in some good box somewhere.
But that that does not compare. And it's actually does, it's not
even real because every time we do a good deed, it comes from
some selfish tainted motive. Anyway, even the purest motive
that we try to do, it's still tainted.
And that's the point here. That's what we need to see in
these, these two women. Thirdly, what I see is
symbolism, and we've already talked a little bit about kind
of spiritual symbolism, but there's there's something I want
to zero in on here that maybe you wouldn't have caught in
Mark's version of it. It says the girl was 12 years of
age. It said immediately the girl got
up, began walking for she was 12 years of age.
And they were immediately overcome with amazement.
And the girl who had the discharge of blood was 12 years.
There's 2 numbers here and they're both 12.
And I know we can't go too far down the rabbit hole of what
some would call biblical numerology.
You know, you can get really superstitious with numbers, and
maybe we do that outside of the Bible, right?
There was a time in my life where I was really weird about
the number 7 and I was like, I got to get gas at pump #7 or, or
whenever I stopped the microwave or it input a number on the
microwave, it would have the number 7.
And anybody do weird stuff like that or is that just me?
Oh, couple people raise their hands and I just say that to
make fun of myself but and to say that there's weird stuff out
there. But that's not what I'm talking
about. I am talking about there are
numbers in the Bible that you need to pay attention to because
they are symbolic. Not all numbers, but a lot of
them. 12 is one of those numbers.
If you know, there's the 12 tribes of Israel, why 12?
Why not 11 or 13 or or something like that?
And then after that there's the 12 disciples.
Why the 12 disciples? And then in the Book of
Revelation it has that #144,000. Where do we get that number?
Well, it comes from the 12 tribes of Israel Times.
What 10,000 * 10,000? Is that the math?
I don't know. It's 12,000 * 1012.
Yes, 12,000 * 12. Sorry, Casey, that's I'm not a
math guy. We got a lot of engineers in the
crowd, but I'm trying to make a point That 12, you see it over
and over again and it's it is kind of like the number 7.
Now there are some numbers, there's the number 37 and 4012
and then 1000. Those 5 numbers, you see them
all throughout the Bible and they're symbolic of something.
12 is a kind of represents the Kingdom of God.
If you think about the 12 tribes of Israel, the 12 disciples,
you're going to see them again in in the Book of Revelation as
well. It's it's symbolic of the
Kingdom of God. I started out saying that God is
the king and he's come. Jesus has come to bring his his
Kingdom. And this is what it looks like
when his Kingdom comes, mercy and grace, healing of disease,
things that were wrong being set right.
That's what God wants us to know, that Jesus has started the
coming of Jesus 2000 years ago, has started what God's will is
for the earth, and not just generally for the earth, but for
humanity, and not just for general humanity, but for God's
people, the people who come to faith in him and believe in him.
We are the spiritual Kingdom of God, and therefore we can look
forward to things like this. They may not happen in this
life, but in the life to come we know that there will be no more
mourning, no more crying, no more sickness, no more disease,
and no more death. That is the Kingdom of God
ultimately fulfilled. And when Jesus is walking on the
earth, he's bringing a little bit of the Kingdom with him
wherever he goes. And now we as the church, since
Jesus ascended, he sent the Holy Spirit into his church, and all
of us now are walking the earth. We are trying to expand the
Kingdom of God because we want all of us to be in the full
culmination of the Kingdom one day, and that's by faith in
Jesus and following him. Now there's something
interesting about this also, this woman who comes up and
touches the fringe of Jesus's garment, all men in the Jewish
tradition would have worn kind of a a robe that had tassels on
it like corners. And those represented also a lot
of things have symbolism. In Numbers 1537, back in the Old
Testament when God was speaking to Moses, he said, speak to the
people of Israel, tell them to make tassels on the corner of
their garments throughout their generation and to put a cord of
blue on the tassel of each corner.
And it shall be a tassel for you to look at and remember all the
commandments of the Lord to do them, not to follow after your
own heart and your own eyes, which you are inclined to whore
after. Those tassels were a reminder
that God had said what His will was.
God had come down and came to save these people.
In fact, in that very context of the Book of Numbers, God had
just got done saving the Israelites out of slavery in
Egypt. And by the way, slavery in Egypt
is a symbolism of what it is that sin is to us.
Sin is slavery. We are enslaved to sin, but God
reaches down, walks among us, and then communicates, leaves us
with His Word so that we can know how do we find Him and how
do we follow him. And this woman represents her
faith by coming and grabbing on to one of those tassels, the
fringe of his garment symbolizing her faith in God.
And she'd probably heard about the things that Jesus had been
doing in her day, in her time in her area.
And all the other people have been delivered.
And again, she wasn't supposed to do that, but by faith, she
came and grabbed the fringe of his garment.
Another pastor friend of mine recently pointed out something
that was pretty rich and deep to me.
And he says in Malachi chapter 4, verse 2, this is the last
book of the Old Testament. It says, But for you who fear my
name, the Sun of Righteousness shall rise with healing in its
wings. You shall go out leaping like
calves from the stall. And the original word in Hebrew
for wing, there is skirt, edge or hem, the the same thing in
the Greek word for the fringe. It's the same word but in Greek
and in Hebrew, because in Old Testament was written in Hebrew,
New Testament in Greek, this verse was prophetic.
We're looking forward to Jesus, the Son of righteousness.
Some translations make the sun uppercase.
That's his name, one of his name's Son of righteousness
rising with healing in his wings.
And you can imagine for a moment, in a small way, this was
being fulfilled in this woman as the Sun of Righteousness had
come upon the people in Israel. And this woman grabs for the hem
of his garment. There's so much symbolism there.
It's a beautiful thing. And we know that Jesus is coming
has has prophetic fulfillment. When Jesus in Luke 4 went to one
of the synagogue's, it says he opened the scroll and found the
place where it was written. The Spirit of the Lord is upon
me because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor.
He sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives into recovering
of the sight of the blind, and to set at liberty all those who
are oppressed and to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.
That was written in the Old Testament of Isaiah.
And Jesus was trying to get everybody to understand this is
talking about me and you're missing it.
But there's a select few people who aren't missing it, which
leads me to the next point. Adoption.
It's often not a word talked about, but adoption, there's a
there's a doctrine of adoption talked about in the Bible.
What when you become a son or daughter of God by faith, you
are adopted into the Kingdom of God.
And here's an interesting point I want to make out of about
these two women is that they're both daughters.
Now, if you think about that, it's not that profound because
all women born had to be a daughter, right?
So I guess all women are daughters, you know, so that's
not that profound of a a statement.
But again, when you look at the scripture, they're both called
daughter by well, one Jesus calls daughter and there's
meaning to that. So let's look again at these two
similarities of these two girls or a girl and a woman being
daughters that ultimately adopted by God, becoming
children of God. In Mark's version of the story,
it tells us a little bit more about what happened when Jesus
raised her from the dead. It said when he had entered, he
said to them, why are you making commotion and weeping?
The child is not dead but sleeping.
And they laughed at him, but he put them all outside and took
the child's father and mother and those who were with him, and
went in where the child was, taking her by the hand.
He said to her Talitha kumai or kum, which means little girl.
I say to you, arise now we know that the scripture says that
Jairus said my daughter. So it is said in there that she
is someone's daughter. But when Jesus says now these
words to Lethakum are written in Aramaic.
Now just a little bit more education for you.
Most of the Old Testament, Hebrew, New Testament Greek, but
there are little portions and comments and quote written in
Aramaic, which was the modern language of the day.
OK, Those are the only three languages in the Bible.
OK, but mostly Hebrew, Greek. But in Aramaic, Talitha means
little lamb, which was also a pet name for children.
But for Jesus to call her little lamb and him grabbing her by the
hand and raising her from the dead meant that this girl was
now Jesus's little lamb. It was now she was a daughter.
There are all these kind of analogies or illustrations like
the church is called the flock of God and we are sheep, right?
Or we're the children of God and he's our father.
And Jesus is the great shepherd, and the Bible says that he knows
his sheep, and they know him, and they follow him, and they
hear his voice. And this she heard Jesus's voice
from the dead. From the dead he called little
lamb, and she rose from the dead.
That is a beautiful thing. That is how it works for you and
I, by the way, when your name is called, when Jesus comes to you
and reveals himself to you, he raises you from the dead.
And what happened today in the baptism was a picture of what
happened as we read in Romans 6. It says that just like Christ
was buried and raised, we too are buried and raised with Him.
Our identity goes from whatever we thought it was, whatever
identity we made-up or assumed in our life, from our old
nature, our sinful nature. And when we follow Christ, we
are buried and die to that nature.
We no longer cling to that or hold on to that sin, but Jesus
causes us to raise to new life. He resurrects us all.
Every believer has already had one resurrection.
Have you ever heard of that before?
You have been spiritually raised from the dead.
The first resurrection, your spirit and your soul was dead.
The Bible says we're all dead in our transgressions and sins in
the garden. When he said you shall surely
die when you take of that fruit, He wasn't just talking about
physical death but spiritual death.
We no no longer have a connection to God through the
spirit anymore, but humans are spiritually dead.
But God raises us from the dead when he calls us by the Spirit
and we become adopted again. Let's see what he says about the
the woman. It says he turned and seeing her
he said take heart daughter, your faith has made you well and
instantly the woman was made well.
Jesus. Here's the thing, why would
Jesus call her daughter? And this is where we all get
confused about the Trinity. And #1 He can call her daughter
because he's God. And so that proves that he's
God, but he is not God the Father, he's God the Son.
But here's what I'll tell you. In Isaiah, it says that it's a
famous Christmas verse. He shall be called wonderful
counselor. Mighty God, everlasting Father,
Prince of Peace. And you've always wondered like,
why is he called everlasting Father in that verse?
Well, that word means Father of eternity If you flip the words
in the original language, He is the creator of eternity.
The New Testament tells us that there was not a thing made that
wasn't made through Jesus Christ the Son.
He is the father of time. He is the creator of all things.
Jesus is the creator. So in that aspect, being God,
being creator, he can come and he can say daughter, another
adoption, right? You're now in the family.
He says the same thing, Jesus in another story about a woman who
we've been bound 18 years by Satan and he calls her a
daughter of Abraham, again, trying to help them.
And they did not like that because Abraham was the father
of their faith and they thought they were the sons of Abraham.
But Jesus says no, anyone who has faith is in the family, not
just people who were born with this lineage, but all people who
come to faith. In fact, John talking about
Jesus in the 1st chapter says, but to all who did receive him,
who believed in his name, he gave the right to become
children of God. Nobody is born a child of God.
I've already tried to teach you that earlier on that we're all
born in iniquity and sin. We're all on level ground.
I'm glad you're at church today because if there was a perfect
person at church, we wouldn't fit in with that person.
You know, I think I said this a couple weeks ago, no perfect
people are allowed here because they don't exist.
We're all sinners and we've come by the grace of God through
faith. The Bible says to be adopted by
God. And here's the the kicker to
this verse though. And we talk about, well, who's
responsible and who? Who did what first?
Did God call me or did I come to this conclusion?
And it says who were born not of blood, nor of the will of the
flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.
By the will of God, we have been adopted from eternity past.
The Bible even says in in Ephesians 1/5 in love, He
predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus
Christ, according to the purpose of his will.
There's so much to this idea of adoption, but these two ladies
were adopted by God. Have you been adopted by God?
You say, preacher, how can I know?
How can I know that God wants me and has chosen me?
Well, I don't think there's any coincidences, first of all.
So secondly, you're here and you're hearing the word of God.
God is calling you whether you like it or not, whether you got
drug here or not, God is calling you because this message is for
you and you specifically. Every ear that hears.
He's calling on you to believe in the Son of God, the one who
has all authority and power and brings the Kingdom of grace and
mercy. And yes, you do have a choice to
come in faith like the Father came for his daughter.
Sometimes it takes somebody else's faith to get us here,
right? Or the desperation of the woman.
If I could just touch Jesus. Quit trying all the other things
out there that you've been trying to get yourself healed
and out of this situation that you are in, in life living in
shame and guilt or not knowing whether you stand in right
standing with God. You can know you can be a child
of God if you believe in his name.
If you believe in Jesus Christ, you know you are adopted by God,
which takes me to the last point.
It's by faith. They both have faith.
There's faith in this story. As I said, the Father, the
Father's faith. Now here's what I said.
You cannot believe for any other person.
My faith isn't going to save my child ultimately, but it might
initiate it. It might start it.
So do you have a family member, friend, neighbor, someone?
It does. God does use your faith to bring
about the faith in another person.
That's how it works. He wants to use us.
God doesn't need to use us. He's all powerful.
We see His authority, but for some reason He wants to use us
in this plan of building the Kingdom.
He put His spirit into us so that we could be that spark of
faith in other people. Jairus faith ultimately led to
his daughter being saved, adopted, delivered and the same
thing is true then for the woman.
If I only touch His garment, I will be made well.
He said take heart daughter, your faith has made you well,
made well. Now did he just heal her or did
he save her? We need to understand when Jesus
heals someone, it's it's symbolic of salvation.
But even if we look at this Greek word, it says the Greek
word is sozo, which is often translated to save.
Other translations would say, and you're this woman was saved
by her faith. In fact, it's the root word
where we get, you know, the study of salvation.
So teriology, so sozo to be healed, to be made well, to be
saved, It's all it's all synonymous.
We're sick, we're unclean, we're unwell, we're diseased, we're
spiritually dead. But God through Jesus Christ
comes to save us by faith. And Hebrews 11/6 says without
faith it is impossible to please him.
For whoever would draw near to God must believe that He exists
and rewards those who seek Him. There are those who are already
seeking Him, and they are being rewarded by the blessings of
just knowing who Jesus is. But anything you do, as the
prophet Isaiah said, you will not please God with if you think
you can do more good than you do bad.
And one day God's going to pull out the scales.
And every one of us, if we live like that, will be found wanting
on the scale of bad. The only good that we can come
to God with is our faith in the one who and only one who was
good, Jesus Christ. The one who came to this earth,
ultimately died in our place, the death that we deserved.
He died on the cross as the ultimate fulfillment of all the
sacrifices, to be a sacrifice for us, so that if we look to
Him and believe on Him, we can be saved.
And Ephesians says this, it's by grace.
You've been saved through faith. This is not of your own doing.
You did nothing to get to that point.
And you will do nothing when you stand before God.
You won't have any words to say, But I did this, but I did that.
No, this is purely a gift. My question to you, would you be
like these two women today in this story?
Be desperate enough to know your need because you're unclean to
recognize what God's Word does actually say about His Kingdom.
Would you long to be adopted by Him as He does that work?
Because we know how adoption works.
The child really had no choice in being adopted, but it was
really the parents who do the work.
And that's, that's our God. He's not waiting for you to do
something to make him want to choose you.
He wants you. And if you can right now believe
in Him, you can repent and agree that you're a Sinner by faith.
Then I implore you to do that today.
I implore you to do that today. And for the rest of us, let us
just rejoice in that. These two women represent the
grace of God to us. Let's pray.
Father, I thank you for your grace, your kindness to us.
I thank you for your word. It's so rich.
It's like a a full meal. We come here starving,
spiritually starving. All week long we've been gorging
on every other piece of spiritual, mental, and emotional
junk food that's out there. And we have lacked coming to the
dinner table. We've lacked coming to the
fountain. But you're a gracious God.
You forgive us. You love us.
Thank you for bringing us here today.
Help all of us here. Follow your will and not ours
anymore, and receive the grace and love that you display to us
in your Word. Thank you, Jesus.
Amen.