Podcasts about whenever jesus

Whenever Jesus sent his disciples out as his witnesses, he informed them that persecution would come their way. This is true for all of us as well. Jesus prepares us through his Spirit, like he prepared his disciples years ago. Be ready to stand for Christ amid the wolves of this world.

Whenever Jesus taught, people were in awe. In all three stories in Luke 15, we learn timeless truths God wants us to internalize: When the lost is found, rejoice! God loves you so much that instead of condemning you for wandering away, He takes the initiative and seeking you out. 

Who is this Man? - Pt 4 - Not a Fair Fight - The forces of evil are real, but they are no match for our King. Whenever Jesus encountered evil spirits, they were terrified…for good reason. He can deliver us from evil, but He can do so much more than that. He can take people on the other side and bring them over to our side. learn more about First Baptist Conroe at fbcconroe.org

Consider our God -- God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit: One! The Disciples were given a physical relationship with Jesus. They did not need the Holy Spirit inside them because they had Jesus with them. Whenever Jesus sent them out 2x2, He gave them the Spirit. If Jesus remained in the flesh, His impact would have been for that generation. But the Holy Spirit can impact the world. The Spirit points us to Jesus on the Cross and the empty Cross points us to the Father. Selah Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

 Audio recordingSermon manuscript:When we think about being blessed or being happy we usually think about wealth, abundance, security, contentment, and so on. Happiness goes together with strength, ability, and freedom. If we have the wherewithal and if we have the opportunity, then we can do what we want. If we should be constrained with our resources or freedom, then we might not be able to do what we want. We most easily and naturally believe that blessedness or happiness comes from being able to do whatever we want. We usually associate not being able to do whatever we want with sadness. Did you notice how Jesus's teaching was strange along these lines? What we usually associate with sadness, Jesus declares as blessedness or happiness. Let's look at a few of the things Jesus said. He said, “Blessed are the poor in spirit.” Is being poor ever good? It's always better to be rich. Even if Jesus is not talking about money, doesn't it sound better to be rich in spirit? Someone being rich in spirit sounds a lot more interesting than someone being poor in spirit. Jesus said, “Blessed are those who mourn.” If someone is mourning, then things haven't gone their way. Someone has died whom they would prefer were still alive. Something has gone wrong that they wish wouldn't have happened. “Blessed are the meek.” The meek are humbled. They can't be impressed with their own importance. We enjoy the feeling of being impressed with ourselves. “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.” If I had to choose between being hungry and thirsty for righteousness and being full of righteousness, I would much rather be full of righteousness. Then I could feel good about myself. From these examples, you can see how Jesus teaches strange things. If we would turn Jesus's statements into their opposites, then they would make much more sense: Blessed are the rich. Blessed are those who are having a great time. Blessed are powerful. If the world would have its own set of beatitudes, or blessings, they would sound like this: “Blessed are the rich, because they can buy whatever they want.” “Blessed are those who are having a great time, because they are making the most of this life.” “Blessed are the powerful, because nobody is pushing them around.” Don't these worldly beatitudes make more sense? We more easily and naturally live our lives when we don't have to rely on God. If we can see to things ourselves, then God doesn't matter as much. What does matter is having the necessary resources and freedom. You better make sure you've got enough of that. And what must be feared above all else is lack and loss. Lack and loss are surefire recipes for misery and sadness. That's one way of thinking, and it's pretty persuasive. It's what comes most easily and naturally. But one of the ways that Jesus is spoken of in the Gospels is that he has come to “proclaim good news to the poor.” The poor don't have anything. The good news is that they are going to get stuff. Where there was lack and loss there will be abundance and life. Jesus will bring this about. Or, at least, that's the claim. Is there a way that I can prove it? No, I'm sorry, I can't. The promises of abundance and life in Jesus can be only either believed or disbelieved. Either Jesus is God and Lord and he will bring about what he has promised, or he is wrong. The poor aren't blessed. Those who mourn aren't blessed. The powerless aren't blessed. Either the rules of life that are laid down by Jesus are how things are, or how things are is governed by the rules that we much more easily and naturally believe. Either a person will put his or her trust in Jesus or a person will put his or her trust in those worldly recipes for happiness. Today as we observe All Saints' Day we must consider this faith in Jesus. Faith in Jesus is how a person is a saint, which means a “holy one.” Only those who become holy are in heaven. Saints receive their holiness through faith in Jesus. They believe that he will keep the promises that he has made—promises like you find in the beatitudes. All of the beatitudes, or blessings, that Jesus spoke of contain promises. They are really glorious promises, if you will challenge yourself to think about what they mean and believe that they can actually come to pass. He says, “Yours is the kingdom of heaven.” God's kingdom in heaven can't be described. The Scriptures say that it is beyond us, no matter how hard we try. Jesus says, “God will comfort you.” How good do you think God is at comforting someone? You perhaps remember the comfort that comes from being in the arms of your dad or your mom or your husband or your wife. God will comfort those who mourn. Jesus says, “You will inherit the earth.” World history is full of vain and ambitious men and women who have strained every fiber of their being to attain mastery over the earth. Jesus says you will inherit it.  “You will be filled with righteousness.” Instead of temptations being victorious over you, you will be victorious over temptations. Jesus says, “You will receive mercy.” We hear about God's mercy all the time, but now we only know his mercy by faith. What will it be like to have our empty sack filled up with the undeserved good things of God? Jesus says, “You will see God.” The Scriptures emphatically state that no one has seen God. “No one can see God and live,” it says over and over again. What will it be like to see God? Jesus says, “You will be called sons of God.” This is not a slight or an insult to you female saints. Jesus is the only Son of God. By being called “sons of God” Jesus is saying that you will be like him. These are good promises. But then Jesus makes a different kind of promise. He promises us that we will be persecuted. He says that we will be reviled. That means that people will say that you are a fanatic. You are impractical. You are a fool about money. You are a fool to love your enemy. They will pronounce curses upon you that you will be poor and miserable and abused because you don't follow the rules of this old world. That is what you will get for following Jesus. It can be scary to be reviled and persecuted and to have all kinds of evil spoken against you. And this will not be done just by strangers. Elsewhere Jesus says that this will come from our nearest and dearest. Households will be divided. Families will be divided. This last promise is so bad, that we might think that we should just leave off with all this. It's not nice. It's disturbing. It's divisive. Religion is supposed to be peaceful and serene. Except it's not. Jesus said, “I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.” Jesus is on the warpath as king against the devil and against all his falseness. Whenever Jesus drove out demons, they convulsed their victims and cried out and put up a mighty fuss. They didn't want to lose control of their victims, and so it is with all the false rules and false gods that possess people today. They don't want to lose their grip. They want to hold us captive. They don't want us to believe in this who has come who proclaims good news to the poor. But these false rules and false gods are bad. They don't keep their promises. They couldn't, even if they wanted to, because their power is limited. They only pretend to be almighty. No matter how rich you are, no matter how powerful you are, no matter how many memories you make, no matter how good of a life you believe that you can make for yourself, none of these things can forgive your sins. None of these things can defeat death. None of these things can fill you with God's love. None of these things can prepare you for seeing God. Only Jesus can do these things. Believe in him! Are you poor? Will you become poor? Are you poor in spirit—kind of dumpy and something of a nobody? Believe in Jesus! He has good news for you even though you lack so much: “Yours is the kingdom of heaven.” Are you mourning? Are things not going your way? Did you imagine that your life would be altogether different? “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.” Thus and so you can do with all these statements of Jesus. There are promises in there for those who will believe. Faith, therefore, makes all the difference. John says in his epistle: “This is the victory that has overcome the world—our faith.” The saints who have gone before us all have this one thing in common: They believed in Jesus. You believe in him too. Believe, and then just wait and see how all the promises he has made will come true. Jesus keeps his promises.

Whenever Jesus used the phrase, “I am,” He was purposely identifying Himself with God. And when He said that He was “the way,” He was giving us one way of understanding the power and manner of His work for mankind. And in this sermon, Pure Life Residential Program Director, Luke Imperato, connects these great statements about Jesus to the great need of the man or woman struggling with pornography addiction and other forms of sexual sin. Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Hosanna to the Son of David St. Matthew 21:1-43 by William Klock That first Palm Sunday, Jesus made his last trip to Jerusalem for the Passover.  In the little town on the hill opposite the city he made arrangement for a donkey, then he rode down into the valley, back up to the city, and fulfilling the ancient prophecy of Zechariah about a humble king who would come to deliver his people.  You and I know where this story is headed.  Just in case we might have forgotten, the long Palm Sunday Gospel gives us an opportunity not just to remember but to put ourselves in the story of Jesus' arrest, his trial, and his crucifixion.  But the people on that first Palm Sunday had no idea that the story was headed in that direction.  Jesus had put two and two together—or maybe we should say that he'd put Moses and Isaiah or the law and the prophets together—and he knew that somehow he was headed to his death, despite the acclaim of the crowd.  I have to think that there were a few others amongst his people, wise people steeped in Scripture and who had heard Jesus preach, who might have suspected what was coming.  But that Good Friday, that the Cross, were just a few days away, would have been a complete surprise to most.  They had heard Jesus preaching good news to the poor; they had seen him heal the sick, the blind, and the lame; they had seen him cast out demons and raise the dead.  These were “Messiah things”.  And even if Jesus didn't always make a lot of sense, even if he was doing other things that didn't fit the narrative they had in their heads, the Lord, the God of Israel, was clearly with him.  And now, here he was riding into Jerusalem on a donkey just as Zechariah had prophesied.  He had to be the long-awaited King. Jesus' timing was perfect.  There couldn't have been a better time for the King to arrive in Jerusalem.  This was Passover.  This was the annual festival where the Jews not only remembered how the Lord had delivered them from their bondage in Egypt, but it was also the time when they looked forward with hope to the day when the Lord would deliver them again.  The people travelling the road with Jesus were on their way to gather with friends and family to tell the story of Moses and Pharaoh, of the ten plagues, of the angel of death and the Passover lambs, the crossing of the Red Sea, and of the Lord meeting them at last in the wilderness.  They were rehearsing a story over a thousand years old, but it was their story.  This was how they became the Lord's people and how he became their God.  It was a story of deliverance in the past and as they retold it each year they expressed their longing for and their faith in God's deliverance in the future.  And now, in Jesus, they see the King finally arriving, and that meant that the covenant renewal and the Lord's visitation and vindication of his people had to be just around the corner. There were a lot of other stories of deliverance in Israel's history, but as they waved their palm branches that first Palm Sunday, the people had to have in mind the story of Judas Maccabaeus.  Two hundred years earlier, he and his army had marched on Jerusalem.  They defeated their Greek overlords and retook the city.  And after retaking the city, Judas cleansed the temple, which Antiochus, the Greek king, had desecrated.  The people of Jerusalem had greeted Judas Maccabeus with palm branches too.  For about a century the Jews lived in freedom under the Maccabees and many in Jesus' day were looking for a King to come like Judas, to once again drive out the oppressors—and this time the Lord would truly be with and stay with his people.  Finally, he would set the world to rights. But Jesus' procession into Jerusalem wasn't the only one.  Pontius Pilate had his own procession into the city.  He lived in Caesarea, down on the Mediterranean coast, but to keep the peace during the Passover as the city was packed with people, Pilate, the Roman governor marched up to Jerusalem with his soldiers.  Pilate would have arrived from the opposite direction as Jesus.  He might have arrived the day before or later that same day, but it's entirely possible that he and Jesus arrived at the same time, King Jesus representing the Lord, the God of Israel, and Pilate representing the great Caesar.  The people caught on.  They were expecting a showdown.  They saw Jesus on the donkey and they remembered Zechariah's prophecy of the coming King.  And in thinking of the King they would certainly also have remembered other prophecies about the King.  They sang psalms on the road to Jerusalem and may have been singing some of the royal psalms about the King coming to conquer the nations, breaking them like a rod of iron and smashing them like pottery.  Jesus looked pretty humble and peaceful now, but many of the people expected him to throw off the humble itinerant preacher disguise to rise up like another Judas Maccabeus.  He would drive out the Romans, the corrupt Herodian sell-outs, and the corrupt priests who governed the temple.  And then he would rule like David and Solomon. So we can imagine the excitement of the people when Jesus headed straight for the temple.  Our lesson from Matthew 21 in the Liturgy of the Palms stops just short of that bit of the story.  Jesus marched into the temple and promptly set about upsetting everything.  He drove out the very people who sold animals and made the sacrificial system possible.  Jesus' problem wasn't so much with the buying and selling.  Sacrifices required pure animals.  Carrying animals all the way from places like Galilee was impractical.  They could escape, get injured, or die on the journey.  The people selling animals were offering a needed service and there was nothing wrong with making a profit—they had to feed their families like everyone else.  The money changers were necessary too, because the temple had its own currency.  No, quoting Jeremiah 7:11, Jesus shouted out that they had turned the temple, God's house, into a house of robbers.  When Jeremiah said these words, he was rebuking people who thought that they could find comfort in God's house while continuing unrepentant in their sin.  By Jesus' time the word for “robber” had taken on added meaning.  The Jews had borrowed the word from Greek and used to refer to violent revolutionaries, like the Zealots, who wanted to overthrow the Romans.  The temple was supposed to be the place where the people came to the Lord in prayer and submitted to his will and his agenda, but instead the people had made it the focal point of their hopes and dreams for violent revolution—of another Maccabean revolt and a violent Messiah like Judas.  And so Jesus did something that disrupted the temple and that stopped the sacrifices.  It was an acted-out prophecy declaring that the temple's days were over and with it the old order.  God was about to do something new.  Jesus had been teaching this all along—and acting it out as well.  Whenever Jesus healed and forgave and declared people clean and bypassed the temple and the system of ritual and purity, he was sending the message that the temple's days were coming to an end and with it the days of the priesthood and the sacrifices.  The Lord, in Jesus, was about to do something new, to offer a better sacrifice, to build a better temple, to make a better priesthood—all centred in him.  So Jesus does it again here in Matthew 21.  Jesus brought the sacrifices in the temple to a halt and then, Matthew says, the blind and the lame came to him and were healed. What kind of King were the people looking for?  Again, they were looking for a warrior like Judas Maccabaeus, but Jesus arrived on a donkey and wept over the city because it did not know the way of peace.  They were looking for a king to come and restore the temple and to once again make it the centre of the world, but Jesus, instead, acted out a prophecy of its destruction and declared that he would tear it down.  They looked for another king like David who would vanquish Israel's enemies, but Jesus instead taught of a king whom the people would reject and murder. Jesus went back to the temple the next day to teach.  Matthew says that the chief priests and elders confronted him to ask by what authority he said and did these things and Jesus threw their question back at them.  They were afraid to answer.  If they admitted that the Lord truly was behind Jesus they'd have to answer for rejecting him.  If they denied it they would lose the respect and obedience of the common people who loved Jesus and, even if they didn't understand him very well, they could see the obvious: God was at work through him.  So the priests and elders simply refused to answer.  They were more concerned with their position of authority than with the truth. Jesus responded with a parable.  This is what he said: “Once upon a time there was a householder who planted a vineyard, built a wall for it, dug out a winepress in it, and built a tower.  Then he rented it out to tenant farmers and went away on a journey.  When harvest time arrived, he sent his slaves to the farmers to collect his produce.  The farmers seized his slaves; they beat one, killed another, and stoned another.  Again he sent other slaves, more than before, and they treated them in the same way.  Finally he sent his son to them.  “They'll respect my son,” he said.  But the farmers saw the son.  “This fellow's the heir!' they said among themselves.  ‘Come on, let's kill him, and then we can take over the property!'  So they seized him, threw him out of the vineyard, and killed him.  Now then: when the vineyard-owner returns, what will he do to those farmers?”  “He'll kill them brutally, the wretches!” they said.  “And he'll lease the vineyard to other farmers who'll give him the produce at the right time.”   “Did you never read what the Bible says?” said Jesus to them: “‘The stone the builders threw away Is now atop the corner; It's from the Lord, all this, they say And we looked on in wonder.'”   “So then let me tell you this: God's kingdom is going to be taken away from you and given to a nation that will produce the goods.  Anyone who falls on this stone will be smashed to pieces, and anyone it falls on will be crushed.” (Matthew 21:33-44 KNT) This time the priests and elders understood.  We know they understood because Matthew goes on to say that they were angry because they knew the parable was about them.  They would have arrested him then and there if it hadn't been for the crowds.  You see, they knew a similar story that Isaiah had told long before.  In Isaiah 5 the story is about a man who lovingly planted a vineyard, but no matter how well he cared for it, it produced only worthless wild grapes.  In the end the man was forced to tear down the wall protecting the vineyard and to let the wild retake it.  Isaiah himself had said that the man was the Lord and the vineyard was Israel.  But, now, in Jesus' version of the story he makes it plain that the problem isn't just the vines producing bad fruit.  It's the tenant farmers refusing to acknowledge the vineyard's real owner: the Lord. Jesus stresses that they've had warning after warning.  The Lord sent his prophets, but they rejected and murdered them.  Now he's sent his own Son whom they're about to reject and murder too.  This is one of the most explicit statements Jesus makes about both his relation to the Lord and about his mission, his vocation to bear himself the hatred and violence of the very people to whom he was sent.  And here Jesus reminds us of the problem.  Again, the people were looking for a David or a Judas Maccabaeus.  They were looking for a king who could overpower Caesar.  But the King who came will, instead, allow the violence of his own people and of Caesar to crush him.  Somehow, Jesus is saying, God's plan will be worked out by everything going terribly wrong in order to make everything perfectly right.  The King will let evil—will let sin and death—do their absolute worst to him.  He will be rejected and scorned.  But the stone that the builders rejected will somehow end up becoming the cornerstone of a new and better temple.  This is where Holy Week is headed.  It's not until Easter, when we find the empty tomb and meet the risen Jesus, that it all makes sense. In the meantime, we need to ask which King we are following.  The world is a mess.  Violence is everywhere.  Strife is everywhere.  Poverty is everywhere.  And the very moment it seems one situation is improving, things fall apart somewhere else.  The things the world looks to for hope never seem to pan out—often they just make things worse.  Brothers and Sisters, we need to ask: In what or in whom do we place our hope for peace and a better world?  Caesar has failed over and over and over.  Many of us place our hope in mammon, but mammon's track record is no better.  We need to declare with Solomon, “Give the king your justice, O God, and your righteousness to the royal son!  May he judge your people with righteousness, and your poor with justice!” (Psalm 72:1-2). But then we need to ask a more personal question.  The Palm Sunday crowd was fickle, hailing Jesus as King on Sunday and crying out for his crucifixion on Friday, but they weren't wrong in their hope for the Lord's deliverance of his people.  They longed to see God's kingdom on earth as it is in heaven.  They hoped for the justice and peace of God to set his Creation to rights.  Where they were wrong was in missing, in failing to see the means by which Jesus would usher in God's kingdom, not by violence, but by giving himself.  Brothers and Sisters, Jesus calls us to follow him on the road through Holy Week—this road of rejection, and of suffering, and even death.  He demands our all.  That's what it means to repent—to turn aside from everything that is not him, to turn aside from every source of security that is not him, and to turn aside from every plan that is not his and to give our lives to the task of proclaiming this King, who gave his life for the sake of his enemies.  It means that we give our whole selves in faith and in hope to make his kingdom known on earth as it is in heaven in practical and tangible ways, that through us, no matter the cost, the world may see his justice and his peace, his mercy and his grace. Let us pray: Almighty and everliving God, in your tender love for mankind you sent your Son our Saviour Jesus Christ to take upon him our nature, and to suffer death upon the cross, giving us the example of his great humility:  Mercifully grant that we may walk in the way of his suffering, and also share in his resurrection; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.  Amen.

Whenever Jesus called people to Himself, He called them to repentance. From his exposition of the gospel of Mark, today R.C. Sproul observes what Christ required of His first disciples and every disciple since. Get R.C. Sproul's Expositional Commentary on the Gospel of Mark for Your Gift of Any Amount: https://gift.renewingyourmind.org/3147/mark-commentary Don't forget to make RenewingYourMind.org your home for daily in-depth Bible study and Christian resources. A donor-supported outreach of Ligonier Ministries. Explore all of our podcasts: https://www.ligonier.org/podcasts

This media has been made available by Mosaic Boston Church. If you'd like to check out more resources, learn about Mosaic Boston, or donate to this ministry, please visit mosaicboston.com.Heavenly Father, we are so thankful that you have chosen to make us yours. We are so thankful that you love us with a tender fatherly love. You are the absolute perfect Father, and we thank you for your loving kindness, and we thank you for your tenderness and, we thank you that you speak truth to us in love.You sent the word of God, truth himself, Jesus Christ. And Jesus, you came because you were moved by love. When you saw our desperate state, our sin-sick souls, and our sick bodies, oppressed by the demonic and the evil one, living in a fallen world, Lord Jesus, you were moved by love to come and deal with the root of the issue, which is our sin. You came to heal our souls, and in the process you reveal yourself to us. You give us faith and the gift of repentance, and you command us to exercise our faith.I pray today, strengthen our faith in who you are, and strengthen our faith in what you've said. And make us a people that believe no matter what. Even if things in our life occur that are against our will, make us a people that still cry out to you, "Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven."Lord, as we look at this tremendous text, I pray that you reveal the truth to us and apply it to us. Most of all, I pray if anyone has not yet had a true saving salvific encounter with the living God, I pray they do so by meeting Jesus Christ, repenting of sin and turning to him. Lord, bless our time in the holy scriptures. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.The title of the sermon today is Eternal Misery or Eternal Joy. As many of you know, I've been dealing with a toothache this past month. I finally got it fixed this past Monday, praise be to God. As I was in the dental chair a couple of weeks ago, midway through the root canal, the dental assistant asks the endodontist, "Do you know why the next door dentist has been out the entire week?" She shook her head, and she said, "No." He responded. He said, "Because she had 10 family members who died in Palestine."The jarring juxtaposition of my temporary pain and this woman's lasting pain made an impression. My pain was temporary because I'm blessed to live in a time where healing is available just by going down the street, thanks be to God, by providing medical professionals. Her pain is lasting because the forces of evil are still alive and treacherous. Despite all of our advances in medicine, technology, people continue to destroy each other.Jesus Christ is the healing king who has come to heal our souls and restore our bodies. God loves life, and God loves people. He wants us as healthy as possible. But true health always begins at the level of the soul, and we've all come down with a terrible case of sin, and it's time to call Dr. Jesus.The main subject of our text today is the miraculous healing of a sick woman and the miraculous resurrection of a girl. The text reveals a tender side of Jesus. It reveals Jesus who is most attentive, most sympathetic to the most hurting. He's presented as gentle, approachable, the healer of the brokenhearted, a sanctuary and a refuge for the weak and helpless. He is the great comforter of the distressed even in the present midst of suffering.Sin makes our world a miserable place, and Jesus entered into this misery to save us from sin, to relieve the miserable consequences of sin in the world. And Jesus does bring a healing power, and we have access to his healing power by believing in him. When we believe in Christ, you have access to the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit enters your body, and your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit. Christians are the third temple of God, and God wants your temple, your body to be healthy, strong, resilient, and effective. Whenever we read a passage, like this healing passage before us, when we read passage like this in scripture, we are to be reminded that human health is important to God, therefore it should be important to us. And the Holy Spirit... us holistically healthy.With that said, would you look at our text today in Mark 5:21-43. Mark 5:21. "And when Jesus had crossed again in the boat to the other side, a great crowd gathered about him, and he was beside the sea. Then came one of the rulers of the synagogue, Jairus by name, and seeing him, he fell at his feet and implored him earnestly saying, 'My little daughter is at the point of death. Come and lay your hands on her so that she may be made well and alive.' He went with him."And a great crowd followed him and thronged about him. There was a woman who had a discharge of blood for 12 years, and who had suffered much under many physicians, and had spent all that she had and was no better, but rather grew worse. She had heard the reports about Jesus and came up behind him in the crowd and touched his garment, for she said, 'If I touch even his garments, I will be made well.' Immediately, the flow of blood dried up, and she felt in her body that she was healed of her disease."Jesus perceiving in himself that power had gone out from him, immediately turned about in the crowd and said, 'Who touched my garments?' His disciples said to him, 'You see the crowd pressing around you, and yet you say, "Who touched me?" He looked around to see who had done it, but the woman knowing what had happened to her, came in fear and trembling and fell down before him and told him the whole truth. He said to her, 'Daughter, your faith has made you well. Go in peace and be healed of your disease.'"While he was still speaking there from the ruler's house, some who said, 'Your daughter is dead. Why trouble the teacher any further?' But overhearing what they said, Jesus said to the ruler of the synagogue, 'Do not fear, only believe.' And he allowed no one to follow him except Peter, and James, and John the brother of James."They came to the house of the ruler of the synagogue, and Jesus saw commotion, people weeping and wailing loudly. When he entered he said to them, 'Why are you making a commotion and weeping? The child is not dead but sleeping.' 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 cumi," which means, 'Little girl, I say to you, arise.' Immediately the girl got up and began walking, for she was 12 years of age, and they were immediately overcome with amazement. And he strictly charged them that no one should know this, and he told them to give her something to eat."This is the reading of God's holy, inerrant, fallible, authoritative word. May he write these eternal truths upon our hearts. Jesus has presented the gospel of Mark as the king of all kings above all kings, king with ultimate authority. He has ultimate authority over God's word. He has authority over nature. He has authority over Satan and the demonic. And in our text today, reveals that he has absolute authority even over humanity's greatest enemy, death itself. He's not merely just a prophet or a miracle worker, he's the very son of God, the one promised through the pages of the Old Testament.Note the similarities between the two miracles. Both the petitioner here desires to be made well, and the word that's used in the Greek is salvation, to be saved. Both the petitioner falls at Jesus' feet, and both the person who is healed is called daughter.In the case of the daughter, the little girl had... In the case of the woman, she's been ill for 12 years, and the other, the girl, is 12 years old. The condition of the two female sufferers render them ceremonially unclean, the woman with her menstrual disorder and the other girl by death. In both cases, the uncleanness is boldly ignored, and in both cases, both the case of the woman who touches the garment of Jesus and when Jesus touches the girl's corpse, fear is mentioned in both and faith is a factor in both.Three points to frame up our time, or three sections. First, 12 years of misery end in eternal joy. Then, 12 years of joy end in temporary misery. Then, the question before us is eternal misery or eternal joy.First, 12 years of misery end in eternal joy. This is verse 21. "Jesus crossed again on the boat to the other side and a great crowd gathered about him. He was beside the sea. Then came one of the rulers of the synagogue, Jairus by name. And seeing him, he fell at his feet and implored him earnestly saying, 'My little daughter's at the point of death. Come, lay your hands on her so that she may be made well and live,' and he came with him."Jesus left the shores of Capernaum to escape the crowds. In the interval, he calmed a raging storm and delivered a man from the grasp of a legion of demons. That was last week. Now he returns, and the swarm is there to greet him. We meet Jairus, who's one of the rulers of the synagogue. It's an honorific type bestowed on someone who has been distinguished through their service to the synagogue. This is a person who is respectable, substantial, of good... prominent, and moral.We see that not all the Jewish authorities were opposed to Jesus. In his homeland, this person's one of the Jewish leaders, and he has particular insight in who Jesus is. He's heard of Jesus' miracles. He sees Jesus. But he's not here as a spiritual leader, he's here as a desperate father. He's heard that Jesus can heal, and he comes to Jesus asking for healing. He's interceding for his daughter.Despite his high rank and his prestige in the community, he falls humbly at Jesus' feet, prostrated before the king, acknowledging, "Jesus, I'm helpless. I don't have the power that I need. I need your authority, and authority and a power greater than mine." He's probably taken significant risk to his reputation, but his desperation brings him to his knees. There was no other option.C.S. Lewis in The Problem of Pain, his famous quote is... He says, "We can ignore even pleasure, but pain insists upon being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasure, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains. It is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world."His little daughter is quite ill, at death's door with an unspecified malady. The father here is the first of three parents in the Gospel of Mark coming to Jesus, begging and imploring for healing. In all three cases, the sick can't do it for themselves, and it's a parent that steps up. It's a parent that intercedes.This is a reminder for every parent. Parents, one of our main jobs is to intercede for our children, to stand on our knees before the Lord and beg for their souls, and beg for their bodies, beg for their minds and ask the Lord to protect and bless. Jesus here listens to Jairus's plea and immediately goes to heal the daughter. As he went, the excited crowd goes with him, surrounds him, making it hard to walk.Verse 24: "A great crowd followed him, and thronged about him. There was a woman who had had a discharge of blood for 12 years and who had suffered much under many physicians and spent all that she had and was no better but rather grew worse." Instead of alleviating her suffering, the doctors had only made it worse. It was a chronic bleeding that she experienced. Despite all of her most persistent efforts, she didn't get better. The illness became increasingly debilitating as she grew older and she spent all her money on a cure to know avail.Also, this illness makes her ceremonially unclean. She's in a perpetual state of uncleanness, meaning she is virtually ostracized from the community. She can't go to the temple. She can't go to the synagogue. Even being around her meant people were considered ceremonially unclean. It was a miserable condition.The secrecy with which she approaches Jesus shows that she knows that she shouldn't be out in public. She's violating a taboo. She too, like Jairus, believed that Jesus had the power to heal. And despite the crush of the crowd, she somehow manages to get close enough to reach out to him.I do want you to notice that the woman is at the opposite end of Jairus, as opposite as you can be, socially speaking, economically, religiously speaking. He's a male leader, she's a nameless woman. He's a synagogue official, she's ritually unclean and excluded from religious community. He has a family with a large household, she has spent all of her money trying to find a cure, impoverished by doctor's fees. How their fortune seemed to be suddenly reversed, his loss of time becomes her gain. The same crowd that slowed Jesus down toward his progress to Jairus's daughter gives her an opportunity to be healed.Verse 27, "She heard the reports about Jesus and came up behind him in the crowd and touched his garment. For she said, 'If I touch even his garments, I will be made well." This moment of contact is grammatically highlighted here in the text. The verb "she touched" is the first finite verb after a series of seven participles. It's read, "And a woman being in a flow of blood for 12 years and having endured many treatments, having spent all her money on them, having not benefited but rather having gotten worse, having heard about Jesus," and then it says, "She touched his garment." The word touch here gains extraordinary intensity. This is the climax of the story.Although her uncleanliness was supposed to transfer to Jesus, the opposite here happens. His purity overpowers the disease. The idea of healing to be brought about by contact with a holy man's garments, we see this idea in the Old Testament. We see this even in the apostles, and the idea's presented all throughout scripture. In one instant, 12 years of pain just disappeared. 12 years of suffering disappeared. 12 years of humiliation, everything just changed in a second. She's healed.Verse 29, "Immediately the flow of blood dried up, and she felt in her body that she was healed of her disease. Jesus perceiving in himself that power had gone out from him immediately turned about in the crowd and said, 'Who touched my garments?'"We know from text like Philippians 2 that Jesus' eternal glory and power were veiled in his human flesh. He did his earthly ministry not from his own power but from the power of the Holy Spirit. He voluntarily set aside divine attributes when he took upon himself the form of a servant. But despite his voluntary limitations, Jesus knew that God's power had gone out from him. He felt that this healing cost him something. It cost him some kind of power, some kind of spiritual energy, which is one of the reasons why we see him often escaping after a season of intense ministry where he loses spiritual power. He goes and he spends significant time with God, the Father, to recuperate in prayer.At this crucial point in the narrative, the focus suddenly shifts from the human perception of Jesus to Jesus' perception of humans. It's a switch in perspective that's often used particularly in the Epistle Galatians 4:9. "But now that you have come to know God, or rather to be known by God." From God's perspective, he does the knowing first.In Mark 5:31, "his disciples said to him, 'You see the crowd pressing around, and yet you say, "Who touched me?"'" Are the disciples being dense or sarcastic? I think they're just focused on the mission in front of him. "Jesus, we have to get to this girl. Jesus, you see how important it is that Jairus's daughter gets healed. We know that delay can be fatal. So why are you asking this seemingly silly question?" Since the crowd was so large and people thronged from all sides, the disciples here are perplexed by the question.But Jesus won't let the woman just touch him and leave. Here you have to pause and say why. She had great faith. She got the miracle that she needed. But Jesus pauses everything and in a very public way has her speak. He wants to speak with her, and he wants her to confess the power of God that she just experienced.It's not enough for a believer to just believe in your heart. There's no such thing as an anonymous Christian. If you believe that Jesus Christ is Lord in your heart, the next step is you have to confess that he's Lord with your mouth, and this is what Jesus is doing. He doesn't just want to heal her body, he wants to heal her soul, so he says, "Who touched my garments?" Whenever Jesus asks a question, he's not looking for information. He's looking to elicit a confession. He wants her to speak.In verse 32, "He looked around to see who had done it. But the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came in fear and trembling and fell down before him and told him the whole truth." She comes in fear and trembling. Her heart was throbbing. Her eyes are tearing up. Would he take the cure away? Will she be punished for breaking the ceremonial law? Would he be angry that she made him unclean or that she tried to steal healing?Jesus here, like a skillful doctor, wounds in order to heal, and he does it tenderly. This is a costly confession to her. That's why she comes with fear and trembling. To speak before a crowd above such personal matters would be incredibly humbling. But humility is an essential part of the kingdom of God.She tells him the whole truth, a phrase that's used in judicial proceedings to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. She's not ashamed to publicly testify that Jesus Christ did heal her.After her confession, Jesus turns to her in verse 34 and he said to her, "Daughter, your faith has made you well go in peace and be healed of your disease." He calls her daughter. She's not related to him. Most likely we don't even know how much older he was than her, but he calls her daughter. He loves her with the heart of God, the Father.What he's communicating to Jairus, who's here, Jairus, who's enjoyed his daughter for 12 years, just 12 years of bliss, he says, "Jairus, in the same way that you have loved your daughter, cared for your daughter, in the same way that you are in pain because of your daughter's pain, I have felt the same over this woman. She is my daughter."The woman was healed because she touched Jesus with faith. She touched Jesus, believing that God could heal her, that this man wasn't just a man, that he was the son of God. For her, faith isn't just intellectual ascent. She knows that, "If I touch him, something will happen. I will be transformed."It's faith in Jesus or is it faith in God? Well, that's a false dichotomy. They come to Jesus, both Jairus and this woman, knowing that the power of God comes through Christ. He says, "Your faith has made you well. Your faith has saved you." The Greek says... It's a Greek word "sozo". Her bodily healing is a good picture of the healing of her soul, and that's why Jesus stopped her. Then he says to her, "Go in peace," which in the English peace is just the absence of strife or the absence of hostility. In the Hebrew, it comes from the word "shalom", which just means wholeness or soundness, holistic health. He says, "Go in this peace." After receiving the benediction, she does.The other reason why he has her publicly announced the healing is to welcome her back into the community. He announces this publicly so that the community knows she's no longer ceremonially unclean. She's been healed on a spiritual level, on a physical level. Now on a social level, he welcomes her back into the community.This story of the woman is our story. We have been, as believers, touched by the power of God, and we've been separated from the faithless crowd by our fearful and wonderful knowledge that Jesus Christ is God, Jesus Christ is Lord, and he has the power to save our souls.The second portion of our text is point two, 12 years of joy and in temporary misery. Verse 35, "And while he was still speaking, there came from the ruler's house some who said, "Your daughter is dead. Why trouble the teacher any further?" This is the most absolute heart-wrenching news that a parent can hear. What parent has not sat 3:00 AM with a sick child begging the Lord, praying over them, "Lord, remove the fever"? What parent has not driven anxiously to the emergency room with a wounded or severely sick child?It's bad enough that she was sick, but now she's died. But knowing if Jesus had not been slowed down, he might've made it to the girl in time probably makes things worse. It seems like Jesus slowed down almost on purpose, almost like he did with Lazarus. He waited two days until Lazarus was surely dead before coming and resurrecting him. The time for emergency medical procedures passed. So why was Jesus wasting his time with this woman, having a conversation with her? Her illness wasn't life-threatening. Couldn't he just come back to her later as a sense of triage so amiss? Well, the answer to that is there's enough power of God to go around for all.My daughters were yesterday arguing, quibbling, quibbling is the word, over which holiday is the best. All three of the youngest landed on Christmas. Christmas is my favorite. Then they got an argument of like, "No, Christmas is my favorite. No, Christmas is my favorite." My response was, "It can be all of our favorites."This is access to the power of God. His power is not diminished by giving His power to one. It's not lessened to give it to another. Therefore, His timing is always contrary to our timing.Verse 36, but overhearing what they said, "Jesus said to the ruler of the synagogue, 'Do not fear, only believe.'" Jairus at this point must've been reeling. He must've been thinking, "Lord, take my life, not hers. Let me die instead of her." But Jairus had witnessed a miracle. He had witnessed the testimony of this woman. He witnessed how tender and compassionate Jesus was with her, and he had witnessed her faith, and that faith most likely inspired his faith.Jesus tells him, "Do not fear, only believe. Keep on believing." What he's saying is, "Ignore the reality that you're seeing. This isn't ultimate reality. This isn't all there is. What you see is not all there is. Ignore the |reality of death and clinging to Jesus' promise of resurrection."Jairus had believed that Jesus could heal his daughter. That's why he came to Jesus. But a resurrection, could Jesus really resurrect her? Jesus is calling Jairus to an even greater level of faith. Often, we do experience delays in life. It feels like when we ask for something from the Lord and it's just delay, delay, delay, sometimes it's easy to sit back and say, "I don't think the Lord loves me anymore." Jesus here is showing that his love is compatible with delays. His grace doesn't come on our timetable, therefore we're not supposed to impose our timetable on the Lord.For Jesus, there was no more problem to resurrect the girl than to cure the fever. Therefore, in times of delay, we are told to keep trusting. Do not fear, keep believing. We don't know all the facts. God does, therefore we are to trust him.2 Corinthians 4:17 says, "For this light, momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal."Teresa of Avila says, "From eternity, the most miserable life in the history of the earth will look like one night in a bad hotel." From God's perspective, 1,000 years is but a day.Verse 37, "And he allowed no one to follow him except Peter, James, and John the brother of James." Jesus dismisses the crowds and instructs them to stay behind. He takes his three most important disciples. I'm calling them the big three from now. The big three are Peter, James, and John. He welcomes them in to see the resurrection. These three will be given a foretaste of Jesus' glory at the transfiguration. These three will be welcomed to pray with Jesus and share in his suffering at Gethsemane, so he welcomes them to go with him.Verse 38, "They came to the house of the ruler of the synagogue, and Jesus saw a commotion, people weeping and wailing loudly, the families in shock." In Matthew's narrative, it's clear that professional mourners were hired and they were already brought in. In that context, you would hire mourners, wailers, and flute players who arrived. They communicated to the community of what had transpired.Verse 39, "When he had entered, he said to them, 'Why are you making commotion and weeping? The child is not dead but sleeping.' 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."The professional mourners, they know death. They're experts in death, therefore they laughed. "What are you talking about? Jesus, we know that she is dead." They laugh at Christ with derision. Jesus is using this metaphor of sleep to tell them that he is about to resurrect her. He is about to wake her up, so to speak. She's not dead but sleeping. Jesus is interpreting death from God's viewpoint.The purpose of this declaration is that death will not have the last word for God's people. God's people do not die. Physically, yes. But we, our soul, we continue living. Jesus puts all the scoffers outside and enters the room only with Jairus, his wife, and the three disciples, and the existence of a separate bedroom, for the girl is testimony to Jairus's wealth. Most Palestinian dwellings from this time were poor, one-room affairs.Verse 41, "In taking her by the ha nd, he said to her, "Talitha cumi," which means, 'Little girl, I say to you, arise.'" Jesus never hesitates to contract ritual defilement by touching a leper or touching a dead person. Why? Because he's holy, and his holiness is overpowering. It's more contagious. It's more transmitting than the sickness.He says to her, "Talitha cumi," He speaks to her in Aramaic. This is interesting because Aramaic seems to have been the usual speech in the Jewish home, especially in Galilee. Greek was certainly the literary and cultural language. Hebrew was the religious language. But at home, the heart language was Aramaic. Aramaic was Jesus' heart language.The command "ephphatha" given to the mute man or when Christ was on the cross, he says, “Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?" which is Aramaic, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" He addresses God as Abba, father.The risen Lord spoke to Mary in her own language, in Aramaic, and that she turned and spoke to him in Aramaic, "raboni" , which means teacher. Jesus here speaks to this little girl in her heart language. "Talitha cumi." Little girl, wake up. Little girl, arise."Verse 42, "And immediately the girl got up and began walking, for she was 12 years of age, and they were immediately overcome with amazement. He strictly charged that no one should know this and told them to give her something to eat."Everyone was overcome with amazement. It was one thing for Jesus to calm the storm, it was something else for Jesus to cast out a legion of demons from the poor man in the text last week, but it's something altogether different for Jesus to resurrect this little girl. And he does so just by speaking. He's demonstrating that he is Lord of all, even death itself.I love this little detail at the end that he tells them, "Hey, feed her something," which for me shows... This is eyewitness account. Why in the world would you include that little detail that adds nothing to the progression of the narrative? Because it happened. Because Jesus doesn't even overlook, despite the commotion or practical need for food.That brings us to point three, eternal misery or eternal joy. Jesus here is more than a prophet. He's more than even Moses or Elijah. He's Lord of all creation. He speaks. He commands the winds and the seas. They all obey him. He is Lord even over Satan and his whole dominion. And now the people of Israel see that Jesus is Lord even over death. He is the one who has come to reverse, overturn the curse, undo the effects of the fall of Adam upon the human race.Jesus' mission wasn't just to come feed people, wasn't just to come teach people, wasn't just to come heal people. No. Jesus has come to deal with the root of all human suffering. He's doing things that the crowd does not understand. They're blinded by their immediate needs. They only see what Jesus can do for them.Jairus and the woman here are the exception. They approach Jesus not just with demands, but with faith, humble faith. They seek healing, but they also exercise faith in God. Jairus seeks help from Jesus. And when help does not come how he wants it to, he keeps trusting, he keeps believing. They come to him with faith that he is who he said he was.Even if the woman had not been healed, and even if Jairus' daughter had not been raised, they still would have believed that Jesus was sent by God and that God's will had been done even if the outcome was not what they wanted. This is the difference between faith and unbelief. Faith accepts the outcome regardless. Regardless of what happens, thy will be done, Lord.The great Bible teacher, G. Campbell Morgan, lost his firstborn daughter. Then 40 years later, preaching on the story of Jairus, he writes this: "I can hardly speak of this matter without becoming personal and reminiscent, remembering a time 40 years ago when my own first lassie lay at the point of death dying. I called for him then, and he came, and surely said to our troubled hearts, 'Fear not. Believe only.' He did not say she shall be made whole. She was not made whole on the earthly plane. She passed away into the life beyond."He did say to her, "Talitha cumi," little lamb, arise.' But in her case, that did not mean stay on the earth level. It meant that he needed her, and he took her to be with himself. She has been with him for all those years as we measure time here, and I've missed her every day. But his word, believe only, has been the strength of the passing years."Like Jairus and the woman who comes to Christ, we must also come to Christ in faith, faith that God is good and that God is loving, faith that he is the one whom God sent, Christ is. And he answers all of our prayers not necessarily according to our desires, and not necessarily according to our timing, but according to God's perfect and holy will.At times we may hear the glorious words, "The child is not dead," or we may hear the tragic words, "The child has died." But no matter what, faith accepts the will of God. Why? Because true saving, living faith understands that when Jesus raised Jairus' daughter from the dead, he's pointing ahead to the end of the age when Jesus himself will heal all of our diseases and raise all of God's people from the dead.What happened would soon become common knowledge, but Jesus strictly charges them not to tell anyone. He is managing the messianic expectations of the crowds. There was much yet for Christ to do, and we see that the raucous crowd was already interfering in some ways.The word here when Jesus says arise is the same word that Christ uses talk about his own death, that Jesus was buried, that Jesus was dead, and he did rise from the dead. This right here is one of the greatest truths about Christianity, that we will all die. And if the Lord should tarry, after that comes the judgment. And we need someone to raise us from the dead, and we need someone to bring us through the judgment that we deserve.This little girl, she died twice, as did Lazarus. Then what? Then comes the judgment. Then we stand before God. God at that moment is going to tell us either you go into eternal joy, eternal bliss, or into eternal punishment. This is Matthew 25:46: "And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life." I wonder when's the last time you meditated on eternity. It just does not end. It's eternity. It's not a hundred years. It's not a thousand. It's not 10,000. It just does not end. It's either eternal life or eternal punishment.2 Thessalonians 1:5-10, "This is the evidence of the righteous judgment of God, that you may be considered worthy of the kingdom of God for which you are also suffering, since indeed God considers it just to repay with affliction those who afflict you and to grant relief to you who are afflicted as well as to us. When the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven with his mighty angels in flaming fire, inflicting vengeance on those who do not know God and on those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. They will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction, away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might, when he comes on that day to be glorified in his saints and to be marveled at among all who have believed, because our testimony to you was believed."Jesus Christ came because he understands that there is eternal suffering in the future of those who would turn from him. That's what every single one of us deserves. But Jesus came in order to provide salvation. He endured infinite misery to save us from eternal misery. Jesus doesn't suffer for all eternity because he is fully God with infinite glory and power. Jesus overcame eternal suffering by overpowering it with his infinite glory.Jesus, when the woman touched him, perceived that power had gone out from him. Well, that was a foretaste. It's a foreshadowing of what happened on the cross. The reason why this woman became clean and Jesus did not become unclean wasn't because the uncleanness disappeared in thin air. No, he took her uncleanness, and he took it upon himself to the cross. He bled like the woman. He came to become unclean in our place. He had to go into death like the girl so that she could be raised to life. He lost the father's hand on the cross. “Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?" My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" He lost the father's hand in order to be able to extend it to us.2 Corinthians 13:4, "For he was crucified in weakness, but lives by the power of God." With his humanity, Jesus endured the crucifixion. With his divinity, he endured eternal sufferings, our eternal sufferings, the eternal sufferings that we deserve."Jonathan Edwards in his 1729 sermon, The Sacrifice of Christ Acceptable, says this: "Though Christ's sufferings were but temporal, that is not eternal, yet they were equivalent to our eternal sufferings by reason of the infinite dignity of his person. Though it was not infinite suffering, yet it was equivalent to infinite suffering, for it was infinite expense. His blood which he spilled, his life, which he laid down was an infinite price because it was the blood of God, as it is expressly called."Acts 20:28, "The Church of God, which he hath purchased with his own blood. His life was the life of that person that was the eternal Son of God, though it was the life of the human nature. Now upon this account, the priced offered was equivalent to the demerit of the sins of all mankind, and his suffering's equivalent to the eternal sufferings of the whole world."Christ suffered infinite suffering to save you, to save me from eternal suffering. How do we get that salvation? How do we get eternal life? How do we get our sins forgiven, the condemnation removed? All you have to do is reach out to Christ in faith. In faith, reach out, and touch him. Have that encounter. Believe that as you reach your hand is there, his hand is there grasp onto yours, and then his coursing healing power goes through your being.Faith takes hold of the power of God, and faith takes hold of His transforming power. This is what saves us. It's faith in Christ. He says, "Don't be afraid, just believe." There is a purifying power in the blood of the lamb of God. No matter what we've done, no matter the uncleanness of our sin, the uncleanness of our lawbreaking, all you have to do is ask for the Lord to purify you, and He will, and He does. All you need is need. All you need is recognition of your need.How much faith do you have to have in Jesus? Just enough to come, just enough to cry out to Christ, just enough to say, "Lord Jesus, have pity on me." The Lord is so gracious. He doesn't refuse anyone that comes to him and says, "Lord, help me."Even if your faith isn't perfect, even if you're brand new to the faith... There's a guy in the scripture that says, "Lord, I believe. Help my unbelief." Even that is enough. Even that is enough to come and to be safe. So, come to Christ wherever you are, doubts and all, and he will begin the process of healing.At this point, I'm going to welcome a brother from the congregation, Brother Robert. Round of applause as he comes up. He's going to testify to the incredible work of God in his life and in his family's life, and just a testimony that God's power is real and he's still working amongst us today. Thank you, Robert.Robert:Morning, everyone. I'm here to share a testimony on behalf of my wife Carissa, my daughter Caitlin, and my son Thomas. For those who don't know me, my name is Robert. When I'm not here playing keyboard, I'm actually working in a biotech company. In fact, I have medical training as a surgeon. This is relevant because two years ago, the weekend of Thanksgiving, my daughter became very sick.It started the weekend of Thanksgiving. She had a party with her friends on the Friday. Saturday, she was a little tired. We thought she was recovering from the party. And on Sunday morning, she refused to get out of bed. While that's normal for a lot of teenagers, it wasn't normal for her. She was highly irritable. She just wanted to curl up and sleep. We felt concerned enough that we manhandled her into the car, took her to the emergency room. And amongst other things, they put a needle into her spinal cord, take some fluid, and it was bad news. They found white blood cells in her cerebral spinal fluid, and these cells presumably were there because of an infection that was affecting her brain.Her ventral diagnosis was something called viral encephalitis. This is where a random virus just affects your brain. It's random enough that it could be one of myriad viruses, and oftentimes you don't even detect which one. The most common viruses that cause this are the ones that cause mouth ulcers and chickenpox. But even then, it's incredibly uncommon. Happens to about one in a million people.I had the experience of actually treating a patient early in my career who suffered from this. He was a 20-something-year-old PhD student. Came into the ER because he had a fever that was so high it was affecting his brain, something called malignant hypothermia. He was rushed to the ICU. The next thing I heard, two days later, he was dead. That was going through my head the entire time Caitlin was diagnosed.Viral encephalitis has a mortality rate of about 30%. Of those people who don't make it, these patients who present late like Caitlin, because she was already quite symptomatic, that statistic gets even worse. The patients who actually do push through, the vast majority have lasting serious neurological issues. All these things were running through my mind as we were going through this.She was rushed to the ICU, had a huge number of tubes and leads hooked up to her. She was comatose. She was looking a lot less like Caitlin, and her body and face were puffing up due to inflammation and fluid retention. I was also thinking, "Did I doom her because we brought her in too late from the hospital?"At some level, I always thought through my training that I could deal with any medical situation with professionalism and dispassion. I now know I'm not able to do this. I was a broken man, devastated that my daughter was being stolen from me right in front of me and I was powerless to do anything about it.Pastors Jan and Shane came quickly when we called them. I'm sure Pastor Jan has his own story about what happened. I distinctly remember them walking into the ICU with great gentleness, knowing how grave the situation was. They also told us they usually ask for God's will to be done, but this time their sense was to pray for God's miraculous healing. I don't remember everything that we prayed about, but I do remember a distinct feeling that God was in the room and in control regardless of the outcome.A couple of hours after they left, Caitlin started discharging fluid like crazy. It was so sudden and so intense, the doctors worried about additional medical complications that could cause fluid imbalance. But her face started returning back to normal, and she showed the smallest hints of improvement, such as moaning a little when they were drawing blood.There was one particular moment when we were changing her IV fluids, and she muttered something, and I shouted at her, "Caitlin, hi." Miraculously, she pried her eyes open and said back, "Hi." That was the sweetest greeting I've ever heard.She spent four days in the ICU, another four days in the hospital ward. She missed over three weeks of school, but managed to return and still somehow managed a 4.0 GPA. She's now attending college. She's coming home next Tuesday for Thanksgiving. That will be celebrating two years since we almost lost her.I don't know how much of this experience was medical versus spiritual, but I do know that every fiber of my being was that Pastors Jan and Shane were vessels of a true miracle that happened that day. In addition, there was an absolute army of people praying for her, our community group, many of you here, were praying for her. Friends, and family, and neighbors across the US, Asia, and Australia. Literally hundreds of people covering her in prayer 24 hours a day. Prayer is powerful. Her neurologist and infectious disease specialists said that her rapid and complete recovery were incompatible with her disease, and I call that a miracle.One more thing. Caitlin liked to spend time in her room with the door just slightly ajar. When she was in the hospital, her door was open all the way, which was because we dragged her out of bed and got her to hospital. I was forced to close that door, since the open door reminded me that she was terribly sick and that she may not be able to come back home. Maybe that's similar to when Mary Magdalene saw the empty tomb, that someone took Jesus' body, which was an additional insult beyond his crucifixion. Right now, her room is wide open, and that's okay not necessarily because she returned to health. Her open door should symbolize God working for our good regardless of outcome.Her open room door is also a reminder that as great as Caitlin's miracle was, and even greater miracle is the empty tomb, Caitlin's salvation is just a hint of Jesus' redeeming power dying for all our sins and the pain, sickness, and suffering which are consequences of that sin. And he rose again that we could have ultimate hope for our own deliverance.The lesson in this storm is not just to appreciate God's ability to miraculously heal. The lesson is that whatever happened, it brought our family and this army of prayer warriors back to the heart of worship, and it helped us focus on God's sovereignty, provision, and redeeming power. Thanks for listening.

This media has been made available by Mosaic Boston Church. If you'd like to check out more resources, learn about Mosaic Boston, or donate to this ministry, please visit mosaicboston.com.Heavenly Father, we are so thankful that you have chosen to make us yours. We are so thankful that you love us with a tender fatherly love. You are the absolute perfect Father, and we thank you for your loving kindness, and we thank you for your tenderness and, we thank you that you speak truth to us in love.You sent the word of God, truth himself, Jesus Christ. And Jesus, you came because you were moved by love. When you saw our desperate state, our sin-sick souls, and our sick bodies, oppressed by the demonic and the evil one, living in a fallen world, Lord Jesus, you were moved by love to come and deal with the root of the issue, which is our sin. You came to heal our souls, and in the process you reveal yourself to us. You give us faith and the gift of repentance, and you command us to exercise our faith.I pray today, strengthen our faith in who you are, and strengthen our faith in what you've said. And make us a people that believe no matter what. Even if things in our life occur that are against our will, make us a people that still cry out to you, "Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven."Lord, as we look at this tremendous text, I pray that you reveal the truth to us and apply it to us. Most of all, I pray if anyone has not yet had a true saving salvific encounter with the living God, I pray they do so by meeting Jesus Christ, repenting of sin and turning to him. Lord, bless our time in the holy scriptures. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.The title of the sermon today is Eternal Misery or Eternal Joy. As many of you know, I've been dealing with a toothache this past month. I finally got it fixed this past Monday, praise be to God. As I was in the dental chair a couple of weeks ago, midway through the root canal, the dental assistant asks the endodontist, "Do you know why the next door dentist has been out the entire week?" She shook her head, and she said, "No." He responded. He said, "Because she had 10 family members who died in Palestine."The jarring juxtaposition of my temporary pain and this woman's lasting pain made an impression. My pain was temporary because I'm blessed to live in a time where healing is available just by going down the street, thanks be to God, by providing medical professionals. Her pain is lasting because the forces of evil are still alive and treacherous. Despite all of our advances in medicine, technology, people continue to destroy each other.Jesus Christ is the healing king who has come to heal our souls and restore our bodies. God loves life, and God loves people. He wants us as healthy as possible. But true health always begins at the level of the soul, and we've all come down with a terrible case of sin, and it's time to call Dr. Jesus.The main subject of our text today is the miraculous healing of a sick woman and the miraculous resurrection of a girl. The text reveals a tender side of Jesus. It reveals Jesus who is most attentive, most sympathetic to the most hurting. He's presented as gentle, approachable, the healer of the brokenhearted, a sanctuary and a refuge for the weak and helpless. He is the great comforter of the distressed even in the present midst of suffering.Sin makes our world a miserable place, and Jesus entered into this misery to save us from sin, to relieve the miserable consequences of sin in the world. And Jesus does bring a healing power, and we have access to his healing power by believing in him. When we believe in Christ, you have access to the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit enters your body, and your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit. Christians are the third temple of God, and God wants your temple, your body to be healthy, strong, resilient, and effective. Whenever we read a passage, like this healing passage before us, when we read passage like this in scripture, we are to be reminded that human health is important to God, therefore it should be important to us. And the Holy Spirit... us holistically healthy.With that said, would you look at our text today in Mark 5:21-43. Mark 5:21. "And when Jesus had crossed again in the boat to the other side, a great crowd gathered about him, and he was beside the sea. Then came one of the rulers of the synagogue, Jairus by name, and seeing him, he fell at his feet and implored him earnestly saying, 'My little daughter is at the point of death. Come and lay your hands on her so that she may be made well and alive.' He went with him."And a great crowd followed him and thronged about him. There was a woman who had a discharge of blood for 12 years, and who had suffered much under many physicians, and had spent all that she had and was no better, but rather grew worse. She had heard the reports about Jesus and came up behind him in the crowd and touched his garment, for she said, 'If I touch even his garments, I will be made well.' Immediately, the flow of blood dried up, and she felt in her body that she was healed of her disease."Jesus perceiving in himself that power had gone out from him, immediately turned about in the crowd and said, 'Who touched my garments?' His disciples said to him, 'You see the crowd pressing around you, and yet you say, "Who touched me?" He looked around to see who had done it, but the woman knowing what had happened to her, came in fear and trembling and fell down before him and told him the whole truth. He said to her, 'Daughter, your faith has made you well. Go in peace and be healed of your disease.'"While he was still speaking there from the ruler's house, some who said, 'Your daughter is dead. Why trouble the teacher any further?' But overhearing what they said, Jesus said to the ruler of the synagogue, 'Do not fear, only believe.' And he allowed no one to follow him except Peter, and James, and John the brother of James."They came to the house of the ruler of the synagogue, and Jesus saw commotion, people weeping and wailing loudly. When he entered he said to them, 'Why are you making a commotion and weeping? The child is not dead but sleeping.' 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 cumi," which means, 'Little girl, I say to you, arise.' Immediately the girl got up and began walking, for she was 12 years of age, and they were immediately overcome with amazement. And he strictly charged them that no one should know this, and he told them to give her something to eat."This is the reading of God's holy, inerrant, fallible, authoritative word. May he write these eternal truths upon our hearts. Jesus has presented the gospel of Mark as the king of all kings above all kings, king with ultimate authority. He has ultimate authority over God's word. He has authority over nature. He has authority over Satan and the demonic. And in our text today, reveals that he has absolute authority even over humanity's greatest enemy, death itself. He's not merely just a prophet or a miracle worker, he's the very son of God, the one promised through the pages of the Old Testament.Note the similarities between the two miracles. Both the petitioner here desires to be made well, and the word that's used in the Greek is salvation, to be saved. Both the petitioner falls at Jesus' feet, and both the person who is healed is called daughter.In the case of the daughter, the little girl had... In the case of the woman, she's been ill for 12 years, and the other, the girl, is 12 years old. The condition of the two female sufferers render them ceremonially unclean, the woman with her menstrual disorder and the other girl by death. In both cases, the uncleanness is boldly ignored, and in both cases, both the case of the woman who touches the garment of Jesus and when Jesus touches the girl's corpse, fear is mentioned in both and faith is a factor in both.Three points to frame up our time, or three sections. First, 12 years of misery end in eternal joy. Then, 12 years of joy end in temporary misery. Then, the question before us is eternal misery or eternal joy.First, 12 years of misery end in eternal joy. This is verse 21. "Jesus crossed again on the boat to the other side and a great crowd gathered about him. He was beside the sea. Then came one of the rulers of the synagogue, Jairus by name. And seeing him, he fell at his feet and implored him earnestly saying, 'My little daughter's at the point of death. Come, lay your hands on her so that she may be made well and live,' and he came with him."Jesus left the shores of Capernaum to escape the crowds. In the interval, he calmed a raging storm and delivered a man from the grasp of a legion of demons. That was last week. Now he returns, and the swarm is there to greet him. We meet Jairus, who's one of the rulers of the synagogue. It's an honorific type bestowed on someone who has been distinguished through their service to the synagogue. This is a person who is respectable, substantial, of good... prominent, and moral.We see that not all the Jewish authorities were opposed to Jesus. In his homeland, this person's one of the Jewish leaders, and he has particular insight in who Jesus is. He's heard of Jesus' miracles. He sees Jesus. But he's not here as a spiritual leader, he's here as a desperate father. He's heard that Jesus can heal, and he comes to Jesus asking for healing. He's interceding for his daughter.Despite his high rank and his prestige in the community, he falls humbly at Jesus' feet, prostrated before the king, acknowledging, "Jesus, I'm helpless. I don't have the power that I need. I need your authority, and authority and a power greater than mine." He's probably taken significant risk to his reputation, but his desperation brings him to his knees. There was no other option.C.S. Lewis in The Problem of Pain, his famous quote is... He says, "We can ignore even pleasure, but pain insists upon being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasure, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains. It is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world."His little daughter is quite ill, at death's door with an unspecified malady. The father here is the first of three parents in the Gospel of Mark coming to Jesus, begging and imploring for healing. In all three cases, the sick can't do it for themselves, and it's a parent that steps up. It's a parent that intercedes.This is a reminder for every parent. Parents, one of our main jobs is to intercede for our children, to stand on our knees before the Lord and beg for their souls, and beg for their bodies, beg for their minds and ask the Lord to protect and bless. Jesus here listens to Jairus's plea and immediately goes to heal the daughter. As he went, the excited crowd goes with him, surrounds him, making it hard to walk.Verse 24: "A great crowd followed him, and thronged about him. There was a woman who had had a discharge of blood for 12 years and who had suffered much under many physicians and spent all that she had and was no better but rather grew worse." Instead of alleviating her suffering, the doctors had only made it worse. It was a chronic bleeding that she experienced. Despite all of her most persistent efforts, she didn't get better. The illness became increasingly debilitating as she grew older and she spent all her money on a cure to know avail.Also, this illness makes her ceremonially unclean. She's in a perpetual state of uncleanness, meaning she is virtually ostracized from the community. She can't go to the temple. She can't go to the synagogue. Even being around her meant people were considered ceremonially unclean. It was a miserable condition.The secrecy with which she approaches Jesus shows that she knows that she shouldn't be out in public. She's violating a taboo. She too, like Jairus, believed that Jesus had the power to heal. And despite the crush of the crowd, she somehow manages to get close enough to reach out to him.I do want you to notice that the woman is at the opposite end of Jairus, as opposite as you can be, socially speaking, economically, religiously speaking. He's a male leader, she's a nameless woman. He's a synagogue official, she's ritually unclean and excluded from religious community. He has a family with a large household, she has spent all of her money trying to find a cure, impoverished by doctor's fees. How their fortune seemed to be suddenly reversed, his loss of time becomes her gain. The same crowd that slowed Jesus down toward his progress to Jairus's daughter gives her an opportunity to be healed.Verse 27, "She heard the reports about Jesus and came up behind him in the crowd and touched his garment. For she said, 'If I touch even his garments, I will be made well." This moment of contact is grammatically highlighted here in the text. The verb "she touched" is the first finite verb after a series of seven participles. It's read, "And a woman being in a flow of blood for 12 years and having endured many treatments, having spent all her money on them, having not benefited but rather having gotten worse, having heard about Jesus," and then it says, "She touched his garment." The word touch here gains extraordinary intensity. This is the climax of the story.Although her uncleanliness was supposed to transfer to Jesus, the opposite here happens. His purity overpowers the disease. The idea of healing to be brought about by contact with a holy man's garments, we see this idea in the Old Testament. We see this even in the apostles, and the idea's presented all throughout scripture. In one instant, 12 years of pain just disappeared. 12 years of suffering disappeared. 12 years of humiliation, everything just changed in a second. She's healed.Verse 29, "Immediately the flow of blood dried up, and she felt in her body that she was healed of her disease. Jesus perceiving in himself that power had gone out from him immediately turned about in the crowd and said, 'Who touched my garments?'"We know from text like Philippians 2 that Jesus' eternal glory and power were veiled in his human flesh. He did his earthly ministry not from his own power but from the power of the Holy Spirit. He voluntarily set aside divine attributes when he took upon himself the form of a servant. But despite his voluntary limitations, Jesus knew that God's power had gone out from him. He felt that this healing cost him something. It cost him some kind of power, some kind of spiritual energy, which is one of the reasons why we see him often escaping after a season of intense ministry where he loses spiritual power. He goes and he spends significant time with God, the Father, to recuperate in prayer.At this crucial point in the narrative, the focus suddenly shifts from the human perception of Jesus to Jesus' perception of humans. It's a switch in perspective that's often used particularly in the Epistle Galatians 4:9. "But now that you have come to know God, or rather to be known by God." From God's perspective, he does the knowing first.In Mark 5:31, "his disciples said to him, 'You see the crowd pressing around, and yet you say, "Who touched me?"'" Are the disciples being dense or sarcastic? I think they're just focused on the mission in front of him. "Jesus, we have to get to this girl. Jesus, you see how important it is that Jairus's daughter gets healed. We know that delay can be fatal. So why are you asking this seemingly silly question?" Since the crowd was so large and people thronged from all sides, the disciples here are perplexed by the question.But Jesus won't let the woman just touch him and leave. Here you have to pause and say why. She had great faith. She got the miracle that she needed. But Jesus pauses everything and in a very public way has her speak. He wants to speak with her, and he wants her to confess the power of God that she just experienced.It's not enough for a believer to just believe in your heart. There's no such thing as an anonymous Christian. If you believe that Jesus Christ is Lord in your heart, the next step is you have to confess that he's Lord with your mouth, and this is what Jesus is doing. He doesn't just want to heal her body, he wants to heal her soul, so he says, "Who touched my garments?" Whenever Jesus asks a question, he's not looking for information. He's looking to elicit a confession. He wants her to speak.In verse 32, "He looked around to see who had done it. But the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came in fear and trembling and fell down before him and told him the whole truth." She comes in fear and trembling. Her heart was throbbing. Her eyes are tearing up. Would he take the cure away? Will she be punished for breaking the ceremonial law? Would he be angry that she made him unclean or that she tried to steal healing?Jesus here, like a skillful doctor, wounds in order to heal, and he does it tenderly. This is a costly confession to her. That's why she comes with fear and trembling. To speak before a crowd above such personal matters would be incredibly humbling. But humility is an essential part of the kingdom of God.She tells him the whole truth, a phrase that's used in judicial proceedings to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. She's not ashamed to publicly testify that Jesus Christ did heal her.After her confession, Jesus turns to her in verse 34 and he said to her, "Daughter, your faith has made you well go in peace and be healed of your disease." He calls her daughter. She's not related to him. Most likely we don't even know how much older he was than her, but he calls her daughter. He loves her with the heart of God, the Father.What he's communicating to Jairus, who's here, Jairus, who's enjoyed his daughter for 12 years, just 12 years of bliss, he says, "Jairus, in the same way that you have loved your daughter, cared for your daughter, in the same way that you are in pain because of your daughter's pain, I have felt the same over this woman. She is my daughter."The woman was healed because she touched Jesus with faith. She touched Jesus, believing that God could heal her, that this man wasn't just a man, that he was the son of God. For her, faith isn't just intellectual ascent. She knows that, "If I touch him, something will happen. I will be transformed."It's faith in Jesus or is it faith in God? Well, that's a false dichotomy. They come to Jesus, both Jairus and this woman, knowing that the power of God comes through Christ. He says, "Your faith has made you well. Your faith has saved you." The Greek says... It's a Greek word "sozo". Her bodily healing is a good picture of the healing of her soul, and that's why Jesus stopped her. Then he says to her, "Go in peace," which in the English peace is just the absence of strife or the absence of hostility. In the Hebrew, it comes from the word "shalom", which just means wholeness or soundness, holistic health. He says, "Go in this peace." After receiving the benediction, she does.The other reason why he has her publicly announced the healing is to welcome her back into the community. He announces this publicly so that the community knows she's no longer ceremonially unclean. She's been healed on a spiritual level, on a physical level. Now on a social level, he welcomes her back into the community.This story of the woman is our story. We have been, as believers, touched by the power of God, and we've been separated from the faithless crowd by our fearful and wonderful knowledge that Jesus Christ is God, Jesus Christ is Lord, and he has the power to save our souls.The second portion of our text is point two, 12 years of joy and in temporary misery. Verse 35, "And while he was still speaking, there came from the ruler's house some who said, "Your daughter is dead. Why trouble the teacher any further?" This is the most absolute heart-wrenching news that a parent can hear. What parent has not sat 3:00 AM with a sick child begging the Lord, praying over them, "Lord, remove the fever"? What parent has not driven anxiously to the emergency room with a wounded or severely sick child?It's bad enough that she was sick, but now she's died. But knowing if Jesus had not been slowed down, he might've made it to the girl in time probably makes things worse. It seems like Jesus slowed down almost on purpose, almost like he did with Lazarus. He waited two days until Lazarus was surely dead before coming and resurrecting him. The time for emergency medical procedures passed. So why was Jesus wasting his time with this woman, having a conversation with her? Her illness wasn't life-threatening. Couldn't he just come back to her later as a sense of triage so amiss? Well, the answer to that is there's enough power of God to go around for all.My daughters were yesterday arguing, quibbling, quibbling is the word, over which holiday is the best. All three of the youngest landed on Christmas. Christmas is my favorite. Then they got an argument of like, "No, Christmas is my favorite. No, Christmas is my favorite." My response was, "It can be all of our favorites."This is access to the power of God. His power is not diminished by giving His power to one. It's not lessened to give it to another. Therefore, His timing is always contrary to our timing.Verse 36, but overhearing what they said, "Jesus said to the ruler of the synagogue, 'Do not fear, only believe.'" Jairus at this point must've been reeling. He must've been thinking, "Lord, take my life, not hers. Let me die instead of her." But Jairus had witnessed a miracle. He had witnessed the testimony of this woman. He witnessed how tender and compassionate Jesus was with her, and he had witnessed her faith, and that faith most likely inspired his faith.Jesus tells him, "Do not fear, only believe. Keep on believing." What he's saying is, "Ignore the reality that you're seeing. This isn't ultimate reality. This isn't all there is. What you see is not all there is. Ignore the |reality of death and clinging to Jesus' promise of resurrection."Jairus had believed that Jesus could heal his daughter. That's why he came to Jesus. But a resurrection, could Jesus really resurrect her? Jesus is calling Jairus to an even greater level of faith. Often, we do experience delays in life. It feels like when we ask for something from the Lord and it's just delay, delay, delay, sometimes it's easy to sit back and say, "I don't think the Lord loves me anymore." Jesus here is showing that his love is compatible with delays. His grace doesn't come on our timetable, therefore we're not supposed to impose our timetable on the Lord.For Jesus, there was no more problem to resurrect the girl than to cure the fever. Therefore, in times of delay, we are told to keep trusting. Do not fear, keep believing. We don't know all the facts. God does, therefore we are to trust him.2 Corinthians 4:17 says, "For this light, momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal."Teresa of Avila says, "From eternity, the most miserable life in the history of the earth will look like one night in a bad hotel." From God's perspective, 1,000 years is but a day.Verse 37, "And he allowed no one to follow him except Peter, James, and John the brother of James." Jesus dismisses the crowds and instructs them to stay behind. He takes his three most important disciples. I'm calling them the big three from now. The big three are Peter, James, and John. He welcomes them in to see the resurrection. These three will be given a foretaste of Jesus' glory at the transfiguration. These three will be welcomed to pray with Jesus and share in his suffering at Gethsemane, so he welcomes them to go with him.Verse 38, "They came to the house of the ruler of the synagogue, and Jesus saw a commotion, people weeping and wailing loudly, the families in shock." In Matthew's narrative, it's clear that professional mourners were hired and they were already brought in. In that context, you would hire mourners, wailers, and flute players who arrived. They communicated to the community of what had transpired.Verse 39, "When he had entered, he said to them, 'Why are you making commotion and weeping? The child is not dead but sleeping.' 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."The professional mourners, they know death. They're experts in death, therefore they laughed. "What are you talking about? Jesus, we know that she is dead." They laugh at Christ with derision. Jesus is using this metaphor of sleep to tell them that he is about to resurrect her. He is about to wake her up, so to speak. She's not dead but sleeping. Jesus is interpreting death from God's viewpoint.The purpose of this declaration is that death will not have the last word for God's people. God's people do not die. Physically, yes. But we, our soul, we continue living. Jesus puts all the scoffers outside and enters the room only with Jairus, his wife, and the three disciples, and the existence of a separate bedroom, for the girl is testimony to Jairus's wealth. Most Palestinian dwellings from this time were poor, one-room affairs.Verse 41, "In taking her by the ha nd, he said to her, "Talitha cumi," which means, 'Little girl, I say to you, arise.'" Jesus never hesitates to contract ritual defilement by touching a leper or touching a dead person. Why? Because he's holy, and his holiness is overpowering. It's more contagious. It's more transmitting than the sickness.He says to her, "Talitha cumi," He speaks to her in Aramaic. This is interesting because Aramaic seems to have been the usual speech in the Jewish home, especially in Galilee. Greek was certainly the literary and cultural language. Hebrew was the religious language. But at home, the heart language was Aramaic. Aramaic was Jesus' heart language.The command "ephphatha" given to the mute man or when Christ was on the cross, he says, “Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?" which is Aramaic, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" He addresses God as Abba, father.The risen Lord spoke to Mary in her own language, in Aramaic, and that she turned and spoke to him in Aramaic, "raboni" , which means teacher. Jesus here speaks to this little girl in her heart language. "Talitha cumi." Little girl, wake up. Little girl, arise."Verse 42, "And immediately the girl got up and began walking, for she was 12 years of age, and they were immediately overcome with amazement. He strictly charged that no one should know this and told them to give her something to eat."Everyone was overcome with amazement. It was one thing for Jesus to calm the storm, it was something else for Jesus to cast out a legion of demons from the poor man in the text last week, but it's something altogether different for Jesus to resurrect this little girl. And he does so just by speaking. He's demonstrating that he is Lord of all, even death itself.I love this little detail at the end that he tells them, "Hey, feed her something," which for me shows... This is eyewitness account. Why in the world would you include that little detail that adds nothing to the progression of the narrative? Because it happened. Because Jesus doesn't even overlook, despite the commotion or practical need for food.That brings us to point three, eternal misery or eternal joy. Jesus here is more than a prophet. He's more than even Moses or Elijah. He's Lord of all creation. He speaks. He commands the winds and the seas. They all obey him. He is Lord even over Satan and his whole dominion. And now the people of Israel see that Jesus is Lord even over death. He is the one who has come to reverse, overturn the curse, undo the effects of the fall of Adam upon the human race.Jesus' mission wasn't just to come feed people, wasn't just to come teach people, wasn't just to come heal people. No. Jesus has come to deal with the root of all human suffering. He's doing things that the crowd does not understand. They're blinded by their immediate needs. They only see what Jesus can do for them.Jairus and the woman here are the exception. They approach Jesus not just with demands, but with faith, humble faith. They seek healing, but they also exercise faith in God. Jairus seeks help from Jesus. And when help does not come how he wants it to, he keeps trusting, he keeps believing. They come to him with faith that he is who he said he was.Even if the woman had not been healed, and even if Jairus' daughter had not been raised, they still would have believed that Jesus was sent by God and that God's will had been done even if the outcome was not what they wanted. This is the difference between faith and unbelief. Faith accepts the outcome regardless. Regardless of what happens, thy will be done, Lord.The great Bible teacher, G. Campbell Morgan, lost his firstborn daughter. Then 40 years later, preaching on the story of Jairus, he writes this: "I can hardly speak of this matter without becoming personal and reminiscent, remembering a time 40 years ago when my own first lassie lay at the point of death dying. I called for him then, and he came, and surely said to our troubled hearts, 'Fear not. Believe only.' He did not say she shall be made whole. She was not made whole on the earthly plane. She passed away into the life beyond."He did say to her, "Talitha cumi," little lamb, arise.' But in her case, that did not mean stay on the earth level. It meant that he needed her, and he took her to be with himself. She has been with him for all those years as we measure time here, and I've missed her every day. But his word, believe only, has been the strength of the passing years."Like Jairus and the woman who comes to Christ, we must also come to Christ in faith, faith that God is good and that God is loving, faith that he is the one whom God sent, Christ is. And he answers all of our prayers not necessarily according to our desires, and not necessarily according to our timing, but according to God's perfect and holy will.At times we may hear the glorious words, "The child is not dead," or we may hear the tragic words, "The child has died." But no matter what, faith accepts the will of God. Why? Because true saving, living faith understands that when Jesus raised Jairus' daughter from the dead, he's pointing ahead to the end of the age when Jesus himself will heal all of our diseases and raise all of God's people from the dead.What happened would soon become common knowledge, but Jesus strictly charges them not to tell anyone. He is managing the messianic expectations of the crowds. There was much yet for Christ to do, and we see that the raucous crowd was already interfering in some ways.The word here when Jesus says arise is the same word that Christ uses talk about his own death, that Jesus was buried, that Jesus was dead, and he did rise from the dead. This right here is one of the greatest truths about Christianity, that we will all die. And if the Lord should tarry, after that comes the judgment. And we need someone to raise us from the dead, and we need someone to bring us through the judgment that we deserve.This little girl, she died twice, as did Lazarus. Then what? Then comes the judgment. Then we stand before God. God at that moment is going to tell us either you go into eternal joy, eternal bliss, or into eternal punishment. This is Matthew 25:46: "And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life." I wonder when's the last time you meditated on eternity. It just does not end. It's eternity. It's not a hundred years. It's not a thousand. It's not 10,000. It just does not end. It's either eternal life or eternal punishment.2 Thessalonians 1:5-10, "This is the evidence of the righteous judgment of God, that you may be considered worthy of the kingdom of God for which you are also suffering, since indeed God considers it just to repay with affliction those who afflict you and to grant relief to you who are afflicted as well as to us. When the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven with his mighty angels in flaming fire, inflicting vengeance on those who do not know God and on those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. They will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction, away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might, when he comes on that day to be glorified in his saints and to be marveled at among all who have believed, because our testimony to you was believed."Jesus Christ came because he understands that there is eternal suffering in the future of those who would turn from him. That's what every single one of us deserves. But Jesus came in order to provide salvation. He endured infinite misery to save us from eternal misery. Jesus doesn't suffer for all eternity because he is fully God with infinite glory and power. Jesus overcame eternal suffering by overpowering it with his infinite glory.Jesus, when the woman touched him, perceived that power had gone out from him. Well, that was a foretaste. It's a foreshadowing of what happened on the cross. The reason why this woman became clean and Jesus did not become unclean wasn't because the uncleanness disappeared in thin air. No, he took her uncleanness, and he took it upon himself to the cross. He bled like the woman. He came to become unclean in our place. He had to go into death like the girl so that she could be raised to life. He lost the father's hand on the cross. “Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?" My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" He lost the father's hand in order to be able to extend it to us.2 Corinthians 13:4, "For he was crucified in weakness, but lives by the power of God." With his humanity, Jesus endured the crucifixion. With his divinity, he endured eternal sufferings, our eternal sufferings, the eternal sufferings that we deserve."Jonathan Edwards in his 1729 sermon, The Sacrifice of Christ Acceptable, says this: "Though Christ's sufferings were but temporal, that is not eternal, yet they were equivalent to our eternal sufferings by reason of the infinite dignity of his person. Though it was not infinite suffering, yet it was equivalent to infinite suffering, for it was infinite expense. His blood which he spilled, his life, which he laid down was an infinite price because it was the blood of God, as it is expressly called."Acts 20:28, "The Church of God, which he hath purchased with his own blood. His life was the life of that person that was the eternal Son of God, though it was the life of the human nature. Now upon this account, the priced offered was equivalent to the demerit of the sins of all mankind, and his suffering's equivalent to the eternal sufferings of the whole world."Christ suffered infinite suffering to save you, to save me from eternal suffering. How do we get that salvation? How do we get eternal life? How do we get our sins forgiven, the condemnation removed? All you have to do is reach out to Christ in faith. In faith, reach out, and touch him. Have that encounter. Believe that as you reach your hand is there, his hand is there grasp onto yours, and then his coursing healing power goes through your being.Faith takes hold of the power of God, and faith takes hold of His transforming power. This is what saves us. It's faith in Christ. He says, "Don't be afraid, just believe." There is a purifying power in the blood of the lamb of God. No matter what we've done, no matter the uncleanness of our sin, the uncleanness of our lawbreaking, all you have to do is ask for the Lord to purify you, and He will, and He does. All you need is need. All you need is recognition of your need.How much faith do you have to have in Jesus? Just enough to come, just enough to cry out to Christ, just enough to say, "Lord Jesus, have pity on me." The Lord is so gracious. He doesn't refuse anyone that comes to him and says, "Lord, help me."Even if your faith isn't perfect, even if you're brand new to the faith... There's a guy in the scripture that says, "Lord, I believe. Help my unbelief." Even that is enough. Even that is enough to come and to be safe. So, come to Christ wherever you are, doubts and all, and he will begin the process of healing.At this point, I'm going to welcome a brother from the congregation, Brother Robert. Round of applause as he comes up. He's going to testify to the incredible work of God in his life and in his family's life, and just a testimony that God's power is real and he's still working amongst us today. Thank you, Robert.Robert:Morning, everyone. I'm here to share a testimony on behalf of my wife Carissa, my daughter Caitlin, and my son Thomas. For those who don't know me, my name is Robert. When I'm not here playing keyboard, I'm actually working in a biotech company. In fact, I have medical training as a surgeon. This is relevant because two years ago, the weekend of Thanksgiving, my daughter became very sick.It started the weekend of Thanksgiving. She had a party with her friends on the Friday. Saturday, she was a little tired. We thought she was recovering from the party. And on Sunday morning, she refused to get out of bed. While that's normal for a lot of teenagers, it wasn't normal for her. She was highly irritable. She just wanted to curl up and sleep. We felt concerned enough that we manhandled her into the car, took her to the emergency room. And amongst other things, they put a needle into her spinal cord, take some fluid, and it was bad news. They found white blood cells in her cerebral spinal fluid, and these cells presumably were there because of an infection that was affecting her brain.Her ventral diagnosis was something called viral encephalitis. This is where a random virus just affects your brain. It's random enough that it could be one of myriad viruses, and oftentimes you don't even detect which one. The most common viruses that cause this are the ones that cause mouth ulcers and chickenpox. But even then, it's incredibly uncommon. Happens to about one in a million people.I had the experience of actually treating a patient early in my career who suffered from this. He was a 20-something-year-old PhD student. Came into the ER because he had a fever that was so high it was affecting his brain, something called malignant hypothermia. He was rushed to the ICU. The next thing I heard, two days later, he was dead. That was going through my head the entire time Caitlin was diagnosed.Viral encephalitis has a mortality rate of about 30%. Of those people who don't make it, these patients who present late like Caitlin, because she was already quite symptomatic, that statistic gets even worse. The patients who actually do push through, the vast majority have lasting serious neurological issues. All these things were running through my mind as we were going through this.She was rushed to the ICU, had a huge number of tubes and leads hooked up to her. She was comatose. She was looking a lot less like Caitlin, and her body and face were puffing up due to inflammation and fluid retention. I was also thinking, "Did I doom her because we brought her in too late from the hospital?"At some level, I always thought through my training that I could deal with any medical situation with professionalism and dispassion. I now know I'm not able to do this. I was a broken man, devastated that my daughter was being stolen from me right in front of me and I was powerless to do anything about it.Pastors Jan and Shane came quickly when we called them. I'm sure Pastor Jan has his own story about what happened. I distinctly remember them walking into the ICU with great gentleness, knowing how grave the situation was. They also told us they usually ask for God's will to be done, but this time their sense was to pray for God's miraculous healing. I don't remember everything that we prayed about, but I do remember a distinct feeling that God was in the room and in control regardless of the outcome.A couple of hours after they left, Caitlin started discharging fluid like crazy. It was so sudden and so intense, the doctors worried about additional medical complications that could cause fluid imbalance. But her face started returning back to normal, and she showed the smallest hints of improvement, such as moaning a little when they were drawing blood.There was one particular moment when we were changing her IV fluids, and she muttered something, and I shouted at her, "Caitlin, hi." Miraculously, she pried her eyes open and said back, "Hi." That was the sweetest greeting I've ever heard.She spent four days in the ICU, another four days in the hospital ward. She missed over three weeks of school, but managed to return and still somehow managed a 4.0 GPA. She's now attending college. She's coming home next Tuesday for Thanksgiving. That will be celebrating two years since we almost lost her.I don't know how much of this experience was medical versus spiritual, but I do know that every fiber of my being was that Pastors Jan and Shane were vessels of a true miracle that happened that day. In addition, there was an absolute army of people praying for her, our community group, many of you here, were praying for her. Friends, and family, and neighbors across the US, Asia, and Australia. Literally hundreds of people covering her in prayer 24 hours a day. Prayer is powerful. Her neurologist and infectious disease specialists said that her rapid and complete recovery were incompatible with her disease, and I call that a miracle.One more thing. Caitlin liked to spend time in her room with the door just slightly ajar. When she was in the hospital, her door was open all the way, which was because we dragged her out of bed and got her to hospital. I was forced to close that door, since the open door reminded me that she was terribly sick and that she may not be able to come back home. Maybe that's similar to when Mary Magdalene saw the empty tomb, that someone took Jesus' body, which was an additional insult beyond his crucifixion. Right now, her room is wide open, and that's okay not necessarily because she returned to health. Her open door should symbolize God working for our good regardless of outcome.Her open room door is also a reminder that as great as Caitlin's miracle was, and even greater miracle is the empty tomb, Caitlin's salvation is just a hint of Jesus' redeeming power dying for all our sins and the pain, sickness, and suffering which are consequences of that sin. And he rose again that we could have ultimate hope for our own deliverance.The lesson in this storm is not just to appreciate God's ability to miraculously heal. The lesson is that whatever happened, it brought our family and this army of prayer warriors back to the heart of worship, and it helped us focus on God's sovereignty, provision, and redeeming power. Thanks for listening.

A huge aspect of living an abundant life is the realization your life has purpose and meaning. God truly has a beautiful plan for his glory and your good set before the foundations of the earth, not only for mankind, but for your life. As we begin wrapping up our week on living an abundant life, I hope you leave today encouraged, envisioned and empowered.   Our Scripture for today comes from  Ephesians 2:10, and today's worship is  Everything You Are by First15 Worship feat. John Mark Kohl. -- Thanks so much for listening to today's podcast on eternal impact.   Making an impact is ultimately all about people. Whenever Jesus encountered a person in need he sensed God leading him to help, he dropped everything and put all his attention on that person. Your highest calling related to impact is love. If you get the opportunity today, follow the example of Jesus and give someone all of your time and attention while you're with them, and experience the abundant life that comes from bearing eternal fruit today.    Have a wonderful rest of your day, and may God bless you as you seek him.   

Whenever Jesus gives us an instruction and leads us in a direction, don't we expect things to go smoothly? Of course we do! Jesus said He would never leave us, nor forsake us. However, we must not confuse safety and protection with comfort. A foundational misunderstanding that many followers of Jesus have is that Jesus will never lead us into a storm. This simply is not true. He will not allow the storm to overtake us, but He will most certainly lead us into them. Storms often build our faith and courage in Him, while also helping us move from places we've settled in comfort.

Whenever Jesus spoke, it made a deep impact on the hearts and minds of the listeners. In Mark 6:2, it says, "And on the Sabbath he began to teach in the synagogue, and many who heard him were astonished." They immediately asked questions among themselves that began with "where? what? and how?" Verse 3 ends with the statement, "and they took offense at him." Whenever we hear words that are deep or challenging that initially catch our attention, we have a choice in how to respond. Sometimes we respond with an inquisitive and teachable heart. Other times we take offense at what others have said, sometimes without getting more context or without any dialogue with the speaker. As we pursue the life of following Jesus, how do we respond to His impactful words?

Whenever Jesus does something, whenever something happens, it is always an opportunity to learn. Whether it happens in the classroom, from the pulpit, or out on the lake, he is always seeking to take us deeper into the truth about God and into his Word. We're looking at Mark 4:35-41 and learning three lessons from the storm.

16sun2023a

Whenever Jesus is present in your circumstance and you hear correction, it's not correction to push you down, it's correction to lift you up to a better way.

Whenever Jesus is present in your circumstance and you hear correction, it's not correction to push you down, it's correction to lift you up to a better way.

Series: All! Jesus has all authority, So that all nationsMight pledge all allegiance to him.Title: “How is God just and generous in salvation?”Scripture: Matthew 20:1-16Heavily indebted to Douglas Sean O'Donnell's commentary for this message. (See below)Bottom line: God's gift of salvation is both just and generous:It's just, so we don't grumble about God's mercy to anyone;It's equally gracious, so we don't begrudge his unequal generosity.Main point: God's gift of salvation is just and generous.A. God's gift of salvation is just, so don't grumble (complain) about God's undeserved grace (or mercy).B. God's gift of salvation is equally gracious (to all), so don't begrudge (look upon with disapproval) w/God's unequal generosity. (Envious or jealous)DISCUSSION QUESTIONSSERMON OUTLINE & NOTESMAIN REFERENCES USEDDISCUSSION QUESTIONSDiscussion questions for group and personal study. Reflect and Discuss1. What does the parable of the workers in a vinevard teach us aboutGod's grace?2. How does the misguided approach of the disciples beginning in Matthew 20:20 parallel your own approach to God and the Christian life?3. How does Jesus' healing of the blind men in Matthew 20:29-34 contrast with the request for privilege by James and John in the previous paragraph?4. Why can't grace and pride coexist? Can you think of other Scriptural passages that speak to this truth?Final Questions (optional or in place of above)What is God saying to you right now? What are you going to do about it?Find our sermons, podcasts, discussion questions and notes at https://www.gracetoday.net/podcastWeekly questions I answer in preparation for the sermon:Q. What do I want you to know? A. That God is just and generous in saving people.Q. Why? A. Because we tend to live as if we deserve it. And there's very little gratitude in that perspective. In fact, we do not deserve it.Q. What do I want you to do? A. Evaluate your relationship with God. Do you believe you deserve salvation? (You don't) Do you believe you can earn your salvation? (You cannot) Q. Why? A. Because salvation is a gift to the damned. None of us deserve it. All of us need it. OUTLINE & NOTESIntroductionJeffrey Lionel Dahmer (/ˈdɑːmər/; May 21, 1960 – November 28, 1994), also known as the Milwaukee Cannibal or the Milwaukee Monster, was an American serial killerand sex offender who killed and dismembered seventeen men and boys between 1978 and 1991.[4] Many of his later murders involved necrophilia,[5] cannibalism, and the permanent preservation of body parts—typically all or part of the skeleton.[6]Although he was diagnosed with borderline personality disorder,[7] schizotypal personality disorder,[8] and a psychotic disorder, Dahmer was found to be legally saneat his trial. He was convicted of fifteen of the sixteen homicides he had committed in Wisconsin and was sentenced to fifteen terms of life imprisonment on February 17, 1992.[9] Dahmer was later sentenced to a sixteenth term of life imprisonment for an additional homicide committed in Ohio in 1978.On November 28, 1994, Dahmer was beaten to death by Christopher Scarver, a fellow inmate at the Columbia Correctional Institution in Portage, Wisconsin.Jeffrey Dawlmer coming to Christ. Stone Phillips interviewed Dawlmer where he learned that Dawlmer, his father and his pastor all testify that Jeffrey believes we all will stand before Christ and answer to him. He trusted Jesus as Lord and savior according to all 3.Dateline NBC has also broadcast an interview with Dahmer. Conducted by Stone Phillips and first broadcast on March 8, 1994, this 90-minute episode—titled Confessions of a Serial Killer—features interviews with Dahmer and his father conducted at Columbia Correctional Institution. Dahmer's mother is also interviewed for this program.[363]Context:“The time had come for the owner of a vineyard to harvest his grapes. The permanent workers on his farm were not numerous enough to complete the harvest in time, so when harvest time came, as many farmers did in the ancient world and still do today, he went looking for day laborers he could hire. Such laborers customarily came to the marketplace in the hope that they would be chosen to labor that day and would gain the standard pay for a day's work in Israel, which was one denarius”Excerpt FromMatthew - An Expositional CommentaryR.C. Sproulhttps://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewBook?id=0This material may be protected by copyright.God's gift of salvation (eternal life; kingdom of God; kingdom of heaven) is generous in just, gracious, and merciful.The landowner wasJust—he paid them all what he agreed to pay them which was fair market value (one day laborers wages). And they all agreed to this up front. They all were paid the same amount. They were probably happy at the beginning of the day because someone hired them enabling them to gain a wage that day. While their circumstances did not change during the day, their expectations did.Perceived as unjust—the workers who were first hired perceived this generosity to be unfair because the last were paid for a full day when they worked < a full day. As a result, they grumbled/complained to the landowner.Grace—While some worked all day (earning their fair share of the wages), the rest worked less than a day and yet were generously paid more than they deserved.Mercy—Some did not get what they deserved (in their minds) which was more than what the latter workers received. Yet, none of them deserved the work. They were mercifully given the opportunity to work when they had no way to create payable work on their own. They were literally at the mercy of a landowner hiring them that day.8A little bit more…Also, keep in mind that this was a time of harvest requiring extra workers. Therefore, in addition to his normal crew, he was bringing other day laborers who needed any kind of work they could get. Therefore, it's safe to assume that they were harvesting grapes—not just tending to the fields. This matters because it reminds us that this imagery is about more than grace, mercy and justice. It's about the harvest. God doesn't just graciously save people to save them. He saves them to serve…in the harvest. This is part of what is referred to as the “Lordship debate”. Does Jesus save, end of sentence. Or does Jesus save that we might join him in saving others? I believe it's both—and. I believe that we demonstrate that our faith is genuine and our salvation real when we join him in the harvest. Otherwise, I think it's safe to say there's evidence to the contrary. When someone saves your life, you feel like you could do anything for them. When you are forgiven a great debt, you live your life grateful for what you don't deserve—more life. When Jesus saves you from sin and death, shame and guilt, hell itself, and you understand this, you find yourself eager to serve God and serve people to this end.Do you?“In the parable, a large group of the workers received grace. One group received justice. However, no one received injustice. But the workers who labored all day thought they received injustice. They thought the owner owed them something”Excerpt FromMatthew - An Expositional CommentaryR.C. Sproulhttps://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewBook?id=0This material may be protected by copyright.“If we were to try to list everything God owes us, it would be the easiest task we were ever assigned, one we could complete in record time. The truth is, He owes us nothing except His wrath as punishment for all our sins”Excerpt FromMatthew - An Expositional CommentaryR.C. Sproulhttps://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewBook?id=0This material may be protected by copyright.Yet, we owe God an infinite debt—our sins are debts against a holy God. Like the servant who owed the king a gazillion dollars, we owe God way more than we could ever pay back. Excerpt from David Platt:Main point: God's gift of salvation is just and generous.A. God's gift of salvation is just, so don't grumble (complain) about God's undeserved grace (or mercy).B. God's gift of salvation is equally gracious (to all), so don't begrudge (look upon with w/God's unequal generosity. (Envious or jealous)Symbolism:Landowner/Master = God the Father; the Lord GodWorkers = Christians; some more and some less in the eyes of the world (and the church)Harvest = Work of the gospel in the worldMatthew 9:37-38 says, “Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field.””‭‭Matthew‬ ‭9‬:‭37‬-‭38‬ ‭NIV‬‬ https://bible.com/bible/111/mat.9.37-38.NIVJUSTICE - getting what you deserveGRACE - getting what you DON'T deserveMERCY - NOT getting what you deserve“Whenever Jesus teaches on grace…he teaches lordship salvation.” -O'Donnell“The traditional Protestant position is that salvation is by grace alone in Christ alone through faith alone, but such faith is never alone—it produces fruit. Faith loves. Faith works. Faith obeys. If such fruit is not found, then the assurance of salvation cannot (should not) be offered. Jesus must be both Savior AND Lord.” -O‘DonnellA last point:2 rules to the grace game:Grace and works. Jesus calls us laborers and workers in his kingdom harvest work. Everyone of them in this parable works in the vineyard, presumably for the harvest. The master goes and puts the idlers to work because grace by faith WORKS!Grace and rewards. These workers were GIVEN a job to work. Jesus rewards every worker who works (gives evidence he's a worker (Christian)). And they're doing a specific work too. They are working in the kingdom harvest. Are we?ConclusionBottom line: Q. What do I want you to do? A. Stop grumbling and begrudging God and people who are just and generous.Q. Why? A. Because he tells us to. Because you know that God is just and generous and that's enough.Notes“20:1-16 Different hours, same wages?Christ told a parable about a landowner who paid the same wages to all his workers even though they had done vastly different amounts of work. God has the sovereign right to reward us for our work as he sees fit.Anything he gives us, whether small or great, is a gift of grace and is more than we deserve.” -Wilmington's Bible HandbookMAIN REFERENCES USED“Preaching the Word” Commentary, Douglas Sean O'Donnell, Edited by Kent Hughes“Matthew” by RC Sproul“The Bible Knowledge Commentary” by Walvoord, Zuck (BKC)“The Bible Exposition Commentary” by Warren Wiersbe (BEC)“Exalting Jesus in Matthew” by David Platt (CCE)Outline Bible, D WillmingtonNIV Study Bible (NIVSB)ESV Study Bible (ESVSB)

Strengthen My Inner Connection with the Spirit with David Hoffmeister Pretty early on in the beginning of the second chapter of A Course in Miracles, Jesus offers a prayer; 'I am here only to be truly helpful. I'm here to represent Him who sent Me. I do not have to worry about what to say or what to do, he who sent me will direct me, and I'm content to be wherever he wishes, knowing he goes there with me. I will heal as I let him teach me to heal.'  Whenever Jesus puts the words 'truly helpful' in a prayer, it means we have to unlearn many of our beliefs and thoughts, which the ego believes is truly helpful, and let the Holy Spirit replace them. Who knows what is truly helpful at any moment?  Enjoy the profound commentary on "The Peaceful Warrior" by David Hoffmeister. If you want to know more about the Weekly Movie Workshops, look here: https://bit.ly/ACIM-Movie-Workshop You can watch the introduction to the movie workshop on YouTube: https://youtu.be/tmXfD-x2Sqg And listen to the entire talk on Spreaker: https://www.spreaker.com/user/4527715/peaceful-warrior-january-21-2023 If you are interested to know more about David Hoffmeister and Living Miracles events, here is more information:  https://circle.livingmiraclescenter.org/events. Read A Course in Miracles online here: https://acourseinmiraclesnow.com/ Learn more about David Hoffmeister here: https://davidhoffmeister.com

Whenever Jesus touches, He leaves a mark of healing, renewed hope and miracle. The healing of the two blindmen shows the support one can get from a companion/community. [Matthew 9:27-31, Friday of the First Week of Advent]

Whenever Jesus saw retail and robbery in the wrong place (the temple), we see Jesus' righteous reaction, the reason for His anger and the results of His anger.

We have a brand-new Feast talk series titled Blessing and Curse which will run for nine weeks. The series centers on Genesis, the first book of the Bible. Why study Genesis? Whenever Jesus was asked hard questions by the Pharisees or by His disciples, He liked turning back to Page 1 of His Bible. Because Genesis shaped His thinking. And because we want to follow Jesus, we want to read the Bible the way Jesus read His Bible. He read Genesis in a very special way—and that's how we want to read it too. This is one of our lofty goals at The Feast. Talk 1 is titled God Made You Good— based on Genesis 1-3, about God making everything good — including humans.

Whenever Jesus referred to people or events from Genesis, he always treated them as real history.

Whenever Jesus referred to people or events from Genesis, he always treated them as real history.

INTRODUCTION The central message of the Bible is God's victory over death through resurrection. As the ministers of God in the Old Testament, the priests of Israel were required to picture God's coming victory over death in a number of ways. While some of the particulars have changed in the New Covenant, the principles really have not. What the Old Testament pictured, Christ has accomplished as our High Priest, and He has made us a holy priesthood for God. THE TEXT “And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, Speak unto Aaron and to his sons, that they separate themselves from the holy things of the children of Israel…” (Lev. 21-22). SUMMARY OF THE TEXT These instructions are given to the priests, the sons of Aaron, and they begin by forbidding touching dead bodies and being defiled and imitating the mourning practices of the pagans (21:1-6, 10-12). Their marriages were to be pictures of purity, and their children were to be faithful (21:7-9, 13-15). Priests who served in the sanctuary were to be physically whole (21:16-24). The priests were to honor the ceremonial cleanliness laws and follow the purification instructions just like the rest of Israel (22:1-9). The privileges of the priesthood belonged to the priest and his household, not visitors or daughters who married out of the priestly tribe (22:10-13). Accidental profaning of holy things required restitution with 20 percent added to it (22:14-16). All offerings were to be males without obvious reminders of the curse of death – no blemish, bruise, spot, or deformity (22:17-25). God required His people to practice a measure of compassion and reverence for new life and motherhood even with animals, permitting newborn animals to be offered only after a week old, and a mother and baby could not be offered on the same day (22:26-28). Sacrifices of thanksgiving were to be offered and eaten on the same day because God is holy and He brought Israel out of Egypt (22:29-33). DO NOT SORROW LIKE THOSE WITHOUT HOPE What the priests were required to practice in the Old Testament with regard to death really is wonderfully fulfilled in Jesus and the principles that continue to apply to us are glorious. The central application of these laws to the New Testament Christian priesthood (all Christians) is that we may not sorrow over death like pagans, like those who have no hope: “But I would not have you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning them which are asleep, that ye sorrow not, even as others which have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with Him” (1 Thess. 4:13-14). The death and resurrection of Jesus has radically altered the world and death itself. This language of “sleeping” is also related. After Jesus conquered death, those who die in Him are not said to really die anymore, only sleep (e.g. 1 Cor. 15:6). Jesus said “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die” (Jn. 11:26-27, Jn. 6:40-58). When Jesus came to the house of the little girl who had died, He said, why are you making such a commotion with all your weeping, she is not dead but only sleeping (Mk. 5:39). Then putting everyone out of the house except her parents, he took the little girl by the hand and told her to arise (Mk. 5:40-41). Did Jesus, our Great High priest touch a dead body? No, because in the presence of Him who is the Resurrection and the Life, His touch is life. To Him, and to all who are in Him, death is merely sleep. So neither do we defile ourselves when we are in the presence of those who die, and we do not mourn as those without hope. We may certainly weep as Jesus did at the grave of Lazarus, but it is not a grief of hopeless despair. And our memorial services do and should reflect that. Because Jesus had not yet come, the priests were required to keep themselves from dead bodies (Lev. 21:1-5, 10-11), and all that resembled the curse of death – those with diseases and deformities could not serve in the tabernacle (Lev. 21:17-23). But now in Christ, those born with disease or deformities are reckoned whole in Him and therefore most welcome in worship and in the worshiping community. ONE BAPTISM & ONE SACRIFICE & ONE PRIESTHOOD In the Old Covenant, there were many baptisms (Heb. 9:10). In fact, that was how you became ceremonially clean, you had to be baptized repeatedly, every time you became unclean before coming to the sanctuary for worship (Lev. 22:6). This is part of the glory of “one baptism” (Eph. 4:5). And Hebrews says that it wasn't just the washing that purified but it was also the offering (Heb. 9:13). This is why the offerings of the Old Covenant had to be without blemish (Lev. 22:19-25), but if God accepted the blood of bulls and goats without blemish as faint shadows for purification, “how much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit, offered Himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?” (Heb. 9:13-14). Jesus is the priest, and Jesus is the sacrifice. CONCLUSIONS And notice what you need to be cleansed from: dead works. Dead people do dead works. Outside of Christ, people are dead in their sins (Eph. 2:1-5). Outside of Christ people are not sick, not merely confused, not merely on life support. Outside of Christ, people are dry bones scattered on the ground (Ez. 37). But people do not think this is what they are since they can still go to church, sing in the choir, vote conservative, and lead small groups. But what they are offering is their own dead works full of blemishes, spots, bruised, crushed, broken, and cut (Lev. 22:24) because they are dead themselves. And therefore, your works will not be accepted by God. This is why you often need to be forgiven for what you think of as being your virtues. Even your righteousness is like filthy rags, full of death (Is. 64:6). You must be raised from the dead and cleansed from your dead works. Many people have pointed out that Jesus never did funerals. Jesus attended or showed up in the midst of funerals, but they never stayed that way. Whenever Jesus shows up in the gospels where someone has died, death never has the last word. In the New Covenant, all Christians are priests, and we all offer our bodies as living sacrifices (Rom. 12:1-2). And what you do all week long is what you are bringing to offer, and that will either be the perfection and purity and resurrection life of Christ or else dead works. What do you have? What is in your hands? What is in your heart? If you call on the Lord, you will be saved.

Whenever Jesus talked about Christianity, He called it a Kingdom. Jesus described God as a good, kind, just, and gracious King that invites us to enter into the joy of His Kingdom, both now in our lives, and ultimately one day when we die. In this week's message, we discover the joy we find living in His Kingdom.

Whenever Jesus talked about Christianity, He called it a Kingdom. Jesus described God as a good, kind, just, and gracious King that invites us to enter into the joy of His Kingdom, both now in our lives, and ultimately one day when we die. In this week's message, we discover the joy we find living in His Kingdom.

Whenever Jesus spoke about Christianity, He called it a Kingdom. He knew that deep down we are all looking for someone or something to fulfill us, something that gives us value, so He called it a Kingdom and invited us to find our value in Him. In this week's message, we discover that God answers this question that we all seem to ask: Is there something worth leveraging your life for - something or someone that will always want you? Is there something that outweighs the cost, the dedication, and the sacrifice it takes to obtain it?

Whenever Jesus spoke about Christianity, He called it a Kingdom. He knew that deep down we are all looking for someone or something to fulfill us, something that gives us value, so He called it a Kingdom and invited us to find our value in Him. In this week's message, we discover that God answers this question that we all seem to ask: Is there something worth leveraging your life for - something or someone that will always want you? Is there something that outweighs the cost, the dedication, and the sacrifice it takes to obtain it?

Whenever Jesus spoke about Christianity, He called it a Kingdom. In this week's message we look at an important reality for individuals, the church, and those that struggle with Christianity. Jesus speaks about a dynamic in us that wants to build our own Kingdom and the reality that sometimes we use Jesus as a tool to build our kingdom instead of surrendering to the life found in His.

Whenever Jesus spoke about Christianity, He called it a Kingdom. In this week's message we look at an important reality for individuals, the church, and those that struggle with Christianity. Jesus speaks about a dynamic in us that wants to build our own Kingdom and the reality that sometimes we use Jesus as a tool to build our kingdom instead of surrendering to the life found in His.

Week 7 of our series, "Jesus Called it a Kingdom." Whenever Jesus talked about Christianity, He called it a Kingdom. In this series, we've been looking at what it means to live in His Kingdom here on earth, while we look forward to the hope of His Kingdom in Heaven. In this week's message, we look at what it looks like to navigate the brokenness of this world and ask the question: If God is good, why doesn't he remove the evil in our world?

Week 7 of our series, "Jesus Called it a Kingdom." Whenever Jesus talked about Christianity, He called it a Kingdom. In this series, we've been looking at what it means to live in His Kingdom here on earth, while we look forward to the hope of His Kingdom in Heaven. In this week's message, we look at what it looks like to navigate the brokenness of this world and ask the question: If God is good, why doesn't he remove the evil in our world?

Whenever Jesus talked about Christianity, He called it a Kingdom. In this series, we've been looking at what it means to live in His Kingdom here on earth, while we look forward to the hope of His Kingdom in Heaven. In this week's message, we look at what it looks like to navigate the brokenness of this world and ask the question: If God is good, why doesn't he remove the evil in our world?

Whenever Jesus talked about Christianity, He called it a Kingdom. In this series, we've been looking at what it means to live in His Kingdom here on earth, while we look forward to the hope of His Kingdom in Heaven. In this week's message, we look at what it looks like to navigate the brokenness of this world and ask the question: If God is good, why doesn't he remove the evil in our world?

Week 5 of our series, "Jesus Called It A Kingdom." Whenever Jesus spoke about Christianity, He called it a Kingdom. In last week's message, we looked at a story Jesus told that described the message of the Kingdom like a seed that has life in it. In this week's message, we continue looking at the story of the seed and ask this critical question: If the message of the kingdom has the power to change my life, then why am I not changing?

Week 5 of our series, "Jesus Called It A Kingdom." Whenever Jesus spoke about Christianity, He called it a Kingdom. In last week's message, we looked at a story Jesus told that described the message of the Kingdom like a seed that has life in it. In this week's message, we continue looking at the story of the seed and ask this critical question: If the message of the kingdom has the power to change my life, then why am I not changing?

Whenever Jesus spoke about Christianity, He called it a Kingdom. In last week's message, we looked at a story Jesus told that described the message of the Kingdom like a seed that has life in it. In this week's message, we continue looking at the story of the seed and ask this important question: If the message of the kingdom has the power to change my life, then why am I not changing?

Whenever Jesus spoke about Christianity, He called it a Kingdom. In last week's message, we looked at a story Jesus told that described the message of the Kingdom like a seed that has life in it. In this week's message, we continue looking at the story of the seed and ask this important question: If the message of the kingdom has the power to change my life, then why am I not changing?

It is Tuesday morning, 17th of May and this is your friend, Angus Buchan, with a thought for the day.If we go to the Gospel of Matthew, the word of God says:“Blessed are the peacemakers,For they shall be called sons of God.”Matthew Chapter 5:9Not blessed are the peace-lovers, no - Blessed are the peacemakers.And then we go to John 20:21:“So Jesus said to them again, “Peace to you! As the Father has sent Me, I also send you.” Jesus was sent down to earth by His Father to be a peacemaker. Today, he sends you and I out into the world as peacemakers, not troublemakers. There are more than enough troublemakers in this world, aren't there? Remember, it takes two to fight. God has called us to bring peace in the home, not strife but peace. It takes a much stronger person to turn the other cheek.But I can hear you saying, “I have my rights as well.” Well, actually, we don't have any rights do we? We gave them up the day we said we were going to follow Jesus. To be a peacemaker you have to be at peace with yourself. An angry, bitter, hurting person can never display the fruit of peace, the peace that Jesus is asking us to produce today. We need to forgive just as we have been forgiven. We need to love, just as we have been loved.Our farm is called Peace, that's right - it is just spelt in Hebrew: Shalom. Whenever Jesus came into a home, the first thing he said was, “Shalom,” which means “Peace be in this home”. But you know, you can't earn peace, you can't do a course in peace, you can't get a degree in peace, no! You have to let peace come into your heart. Jesus says:“Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and dine with him, and he with Me.”Revelation 3:20 Remember, the handle of the door is only on the inside... We need to invite Him in. Many years ago, when we had those massive men's conferences on the farm, Shalom, I remember a beautiful story.... There were three or four young guys who were going to come down to the Mighty Men Conference, they had a friend who was taking a lot of strain. I don't know what it was - He was so uptight, so intense and they invited him. He didn't want to come. They actually conned him into it, saying they were going on a fishing trip. He got in with his fishing rods and tackle and off they drove. When they came to the farm, Shalom, this man got out of the pick-up and asked, “Where are we?” As his feet touched the ground he started to cry, uncontrollably, as peace started to enter his heart. Now, that peace didn't come from the ground or the surroundings. It came from tens of thousands of men who had peace in their hearts and the Lord Jesus Christ was there, in all His Glory.Today, be a peacemaker. Jesus bless you!Goodbye.

Week 4 of our series, "Jesus Called It A Kingdom." Whenever Jesus spoke about Christianity, He called it a Kingdom. Looking at Christianity through the lens of a Kingdom allows us to see Jesus as a gracious, kind, self-sacrificing King who invites us into the life and hope that is found in His Kingdom. In this week's message, we look at something Jesus says that speaks to those who believe in Him, and those who struggle to believe if His Kingdom is real.

Week 4 of our series, "Jesus Called It A Kingdom." Whenever Jesus spoke about Christianity, He called it a Kingdom. Looking at Christianity through the lens of a Kingdom allows us to see Jesus as a gracious, kind, self-sacrificing King who invites us into the life and hope that is found in His Kingdom. In this week's message, we look at something Jesus says that speaks to those who believe in Him, and those who struggle to believe if His Kingdom is real.

Whenever Jesus spoke about Christianity, He called it a Kingdom. Looking at Christianity through the lens of a Kingdom allows us to see Jesus as a gracious, kind, self-sacrificing King who invites us into the life and hope that is found in His Kingdom. In this week's message, we look at something Jesus says that speaks to those who believe in Him, and those who struggle to believe if His Kingdom is real.

Whenever Jesus spoke about Christianity, He called it a Kingdom. Looking at Christianity through the lens of a Kingdom allows us to see Jesus as a gracious, kind, self-sacrificing King who invites us into the life and hope that is found in His Kingdom. In this week's message, we look at something Jesus says that speaks to those who believe in Him, and those who struggle to believe if His Kingdom is real.

Week 3 of our series, "Jesus Called It A Kingdom." Whenever Jesus spoke about what Christianity looks like and what living out faith and the invitation to grace, He called it a Kingdom. Jesus calling it a Kingdom provides an easy question to ask every time we bump into a version of Christianity that feels nothing like Jesus: Whose kingdom is this? We can even ask ourselves is this my kingdom or God's Kingdom? In this week's message, we look at the culture of God's Kingdom and how it can positively impact anyone who comes in contact with it.

Week 3 of our series, "Jesus Called It A Kingdom." Whenever Jesus spoke about what Christianity looks like and what living out faith and the invitation to grace, He called it a Kingdom. Jesus calling it a Kingdom provides an easy question to ask every time we bump into a version of Christianity that feels nothing like Jesus: Whose kingdom is this? We can even ask ourselves is this my kingdom or God's Kingdom? In this week's message, we look at the culture of God's Kingdom and how it can positively impact anyone who comes in contact with it.

Whenever Jesus spoke about what Christianity looks like and what living out faith and the invitation to grace, He called it a Kingdom. Jesus calling it a Kingdom provides an easy question to ask every time we bump into a version of Christianity that feels nothing like Jesus: Whose kingdom is this? We can even ask ourselves is this my kingdom or God's Kingdom? In this week's message, we look at the culture of God's Kingdom and how it can positively impact anyone who comes in contact with it.

Whenever Jesus spoke about what Christianity looks like and what living out faith and the invitation to grace, He called it a Kingdom. Jesus calling it a Kingdom provides an easy question to ask every time we bump into a version of Christianity that feels nothing like Jesus: Whose kingdom is this? We can even ask ourselves is this my kingdom or God's Kingdom? In this week's message, we look at the culture of God's Kingdom and how it can positively impact anyone who comes in contact with it.

Week 2 of our series, "Jesus Called It A Kingdom." Whenever Jesus seemed to talk about what Christianity looked like He called it a Kingdom. Jesus taught that life, hope, meaning, purpose, joy, and peace can be found in His Kingdom. In this week's message we ask the question: If Jesus called it a Kingdom, how do we enter it? We discover that Jesus answers this question clearly in a few different ways, and when put together we see how we can experience the life, hope, and peace that comes from living in His Kingdom.

John 12:12-26. What does it mean to follow Jesus? Whenever Jesus attracted big crowds, He seemed to share some big, hard to swallow truths. Jesus didn't want anyone to follow Him without a proper understanding of what that meant. In today's message Pastor Jeff looks at one of those “big truths” that Jesus shares with those who wish to become His followers.For upcoming events and important announcements at Skyline, visit our Facebook page for the latest details!If you'd like to check out more resources, get to know Skyline Church, or donate to our ministry and missions please visit skyline.church. Don't forget to leave us a review and subscribe to have our Sunday message downloaded straight to your phone each week!