Mark 5:21-43
Date: December 25th 2022
Speaker: Samuel M. Crites
Scripture: Mark 5:21-43
Exegetical Outline:
Main Idea of the Text: Jesus heals a woman that no one else could heal and raises a little girl from the dead.
21-24: Jesus goes with Jairus to heal his daughter.
25-34: On the way, a woman with a discharge of blood that no one could heal is healed by touching Christ.
35-36: A messenger tells Jairus his daughter is dead, but Jesus continued to the house.
37-42: When Jesus arrives, Jesus raises Jairus’s daughter from the dead.
Homiletical Outline:
Main Idea of the Sermon: Jesus can heal what no one else can heal and he has the power to reverse death.
Jesus can heal what no one else can heal.
Jesus has the power to reverse death.
Introduction
Who is Jesus Christ? This is the question that hovers over Christ’s ministry in Galilee. As he is publicly preaching the gospel of the Kingdom of God and performing miracles, he is leading his disciples down the path to answer this profound question.
While in Galilee, the primary focus of Christ’s ministry is not educating the crowds. He is educating his disciples. Christ’s teaching method includes two things: private instruction and public demonstration of power. Three weeks ago, we saw that Christ taught his disciples through private instruction. After teaching publicly in mysterious parables, Christ explained everything to his disciples in plain speech. The main point of Christ’s teaching ministry with his disciples is the kingdom of God. Using many parables, Christ taught the disciples what to expect from his kingdom.
But verbal instruction was not Chirst’s only means of teaching his disciples. Christ is also teaching his disciples through demonstrations of power. Last week, we saw Christ teach his disciples that he is both Creator and King. He is Creator, because he commands the seas and the storm in a way that only YHWH can command it. The storm submits to Christ’s will, because it is fitting that created things should obey the will of the one that created them. We saw that in the Old Testament, only YHWH can do what Jesus did before the storm. The disciples also saw Christ demonstrate his power as King. When Jesus interacted with the Legion that possessed the demoniac, the Legion had no hope but to come and kneel before Christ. They recognized that he was the Son of God, and begged for his mercy. It was not a battle, or even a struggle. Christ sent the Legion into the herd of pigs, because Christ is the sovereign King over all spiritual powers. They must all bow down before him. Christ also authoritatively commissioned the demoniac, who was now healed and in his right mind, to go back to his family and proclaim the Gospel. The demoniac desired to go with Christ, but his king had sent him on an errand so he went willingly.
The disciples have been immersed in all of this. They have heard the explicit instruction of Christ on the kingdom of God, and they have watched Christ exercise his divine power in such a way that they are truly starting to see the shape of the question: who is Christ? They may not know the answer yet, but they are starting to get a sense for the magnitude of this question.
This week, Christ is going to continue to demonstrate his power to his disciples, slowly leading them toward Chapter 8. In Chapter 8, Christ will put them to the test. Let’s read Mark 5:21-43, paying special attention to the powerful things Christ does.
Mark 5:21-43
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. 22 Then came one of the rulers of the synagogue, Jairus by name, and seeing him, he fell at his feet 23 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 live.” 24 And he went with him.
And a great crowd followed him and thronged about him. 25 And there was a woman who had had a discharge of blood for twelve years, 26 and who had suffered much under many physicians, and had spent all that she had, and was no better but rather grew worse. 27 She had heard the reports about Jesus and came up behind him in the crowd and touched his garment. 28 For she said, “If I touch even his garments, I will be made well.” 29 And immediately the flow of blood dried up, and she felt in her body that she was healed of her disease. 30 And Jesus, perceiving in himself that power had gone out from him, immediately turned about in the crowd and said, “Who touched my garments?” 31 And his disciples said to him, “You see the crowd pressing around you, and yet you say, ‘Who touched me?’ ” 32 And he looked around to see who had done it. 33 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. 34 And he said to her, “Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace, and be healed of your disease.”
35 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?” 36 But overhearing what they said, Jesus said to the ruler of the synagogue, “Do not fear, only believe.” 37 And he allowed no one to follow him except Peter and James and John the brother of James. 38 They came to the house of the ruler of the synagogue, and Jesus saw a commotion, people weeping and wailing loudly. 39 And when he had entered, he said to them, “Why are you making a commotion and weeping? The child is not dead but sleeping.” 40 And they laughed at him. But he put them all outside and took the child’s father and mother and those who were with him and went in where the child was. 41 Taking her by the hand he said to her, “Talitha cumi,” which means, “Little girl, I say to you, arise.” 42 And immediately the girl got up and began walking (for she was twelve years of age), and they were immediately overcome with amazement. 43 And he strictly charged them that no one should know this, and told them to give her something to eat.
Who is Jesus Christ? The main point of today’s sermon adds two data points to our growing list of answers to that question. The main point of our sermon is: Jesus Christ has the power to heal what no one else can heal and the power to reverse death. Our sermon will have two main points. Frist, we will see how Jesus has the power to heal what no one else can heal. The woman with a discharge of blood was desperate. She had spent all of her money on physicians that had made her life worse, not better. No one could heal her until she met Jesus. He could heal her. The second point of our sermon will be that Jesus has the power to reverse death. Not only can Jesus heal any physical sickness, he is also the master over the grave. Death cannot silence his call. He called the little girl back to life as easily as waking a person from sleep. Jesus Christ is not only Creator and King, he has the power to heal what no one else can heal and the power to reverse death.
Jesus has the power to heal what no one else can heal.
Read with me Mark 5:21-24:
Mark 5:21-24
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. 22 Then came one of the rulers of the synagogue, Jairus by name, and seeing him, he fell at his feet 23 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 live.” 24 And he went with him. And a great crowd followed him and thronged about him.
After freeing the demoniac and sending him to evangelize his family and friends, Jesus comes back across the sea of Galilee. When he arrives he is met by a leader of the synagogue named Jairus. As a leader of the synagogue, this man is clearly Jewish and an important member of society. Jairus sought Jesus out because he is in desperate for Christ to come save his young daughter that is deathly sick. Now Jairus is important to the second part of our sermon, but his problems are merely a plot point in the first part of our sermon. For the first half of our sermon, we are more concerned with what happened on the way to Jairus’s house than we are with Jairus and his daughter. Let’s continue reading in Mark 5, beginning in verse 25.
Mark 5:25-34
25 And there was a woman who had had a discharge of blood for twelve years, 26 and who had suffered much under many physicians, and had spent all that she had, and was no better but rather grew worse. 27 She had heard the reports about Jesus and came up behind him in the crowd and touched his garment. 28 For she said, “If I touch even his garments, I will be made well.” 29 And immediately the flow of blood dried up, and she felt in her body that she was healed of her disease. 30 And Jesus, perceiving in himself that power had gone out from him, immediately turned about in the crowd and said, “Who touched my garments?” 31 And his disciples said to him, “You see the crowd pressing around you, and yet you say, ‘Who touched me?’ ” 32 And he looked around to see who had done it. 33 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. 34 And he said to her, “Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace, and be healed of your disease.”
Every time I read this narrative, I feel great pity for this woman. Her disease cost her everything. First, it cost her, her health. For twelve years, she had a continual discharge of blood. No matter how many physicians she went to see, it continued. Given the primitive nature of the times, she suffered greatly under these physicians. There is no telling what kind of healing might have been prescribed, but we know without a doubt the none of them worked and they caused her great suffering. Rather than help her, every healing remedy she attempted caused her more pain and did not heal her disease.
Her disease also cost her, her wealth. We don’t know if she was extremely wealthy before she contracted her disease, but we know for certain, by the end, he disease left her destitute. Many medical remedies in the time would require you to travel to special places like the salt pools of Hierapolis. These types of journeys and treatments cost money and this woman had spent it all.
Her disease made her unclean. Under the Mosaic Law, any woman that had a discharge of blood was ceremonially unclean. This meant that she could not worship or make sacrifices for twelve years. Not only that, but she was not supposed to touch anyone. If she touched someone then they too would become ceremonially unclean. If she was married, this meant that she would not be able to have sex with her husband. It could have led to her being divorced.
She would not have been able to work, be with her family or worship in the temple. Hopefully, you can begin to feel the desperation this woman felt. Hopefully you can feel pity in your gut for someone so helpless and without hope. She had one hope: that the rumors about this Jesus of Nazareth just might be true.
As Jesus is going with Jairus, a great crowd has formed around him; people are pressing in on him from all sides, jostling and touching him from all directions. Last week we saw something amazing and unique about Christ. He is one person with two natures. Without dividing Jesus in any way, we saw that he is both the man, overcome with weariness, sleeping in the prow of the boat, and he is the Creator God that calmed the sea with the word of his power. He is truly God and truly man without confusion, unchangeable, indivisible, and inseparable.
We see that again this week. As he is walking through the crowd, this woman reaches out touches the hem of his garment. When she does, she is immediately healed. At the same time, Jesus is aware of the healing, but does not see who it was that he healed. God the Son according to the healing, man according to his knowledge of the situation; one person, Jesus the Christ with no confusion. At this point, the woman has lived so long in shame and isolation, it seems natural that she would seek to simply touch him and sneak off in the crowd, but Jesus makes her confront him. It is significant that she had to touch Jesus to be healed, because she was not allowed to touch anyone, and by touching him she made him unclean. A new wave of shame must have washed over her as she was exposed to all for what she had done. It says that she fell down before him in fear and trembling, no doubt expecting to be punished for her impudence.
But she was not rebuked. She was not shamed. In fact, she was honored by Christ. He called her daughter. Jesus looked past her pain, and shame, and uncleanness, and saw her faith. She trusted that he had the power to heal what no one else could heal. He says that her faith had made her well.
The woman is like many of us in the room. Many of us have sins that are like this woman’s illness. They are gross and detestable things that we nurse in secret. Sins like pornography or an eating disorder. Maybe we are quietly nursing envy as we mindlessly surf social media. Maybe we eat in an undisciplined way, seeking fulfillment in food that can only come from God. We have sought remedies for these secret sicknesses in the past but have not found any deliverance. We have tried to be disciplined, we have quietly punished ourselves for not being strong enough. We tell ourselves that our struggle is unique. Other people do not struggle with what we struggle.
This woman’s story is for you and for me. We need to hear that Jesus heals what no one else can heal. The sickness that you have been struggling with for years and years can be healed. In fact, it already has been healed by Christ. Listen to Peter in 1 Peter 2:24-25:
1 Peter 2:24-25
24 He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed. 25 For you were straying like sheep, but have now returned to the Shepherd and Overseer of your souls.
When Christ died on the cross, his body bore our sins. So, when his body died so did your sin. The woman in Mark 5 was a slave to her sickness. It changed every aspect of her life. It totally defined her and prevented her from even having a life, but after she met Jesus, she didn’t bleed another day in her life. He healed her; freeing her to be who God truly made her to be. The same is true of every Christian. It may seem like you are still a slave to your secret sins, but you have already been healed like this woman. You are not defined by the blood of your sin, but by the blood Christ shed on the cross. His wounds have healed you and made you clean. The only thing that stands between every Christian in this room and the freedom to conquer secret sin in your life is faith. Trust in the promise of Christ, He says you have already been healed and sin no longer has any power over you, so live as one that is free.
Jesus has the power to heal what no one else can heal. Stop looking to medicine men and herbalists that cannot heal. Turn to Christ. He is the Great Physician of our soul who has healed us through his own body. Through Christ, we have died to sin so we can live to righteousness. Not only does Christ have the power to heal, but we also see that Christ has the power to reverse death.
Christ has the power to reverse death.
Let’s read Mark 5:35-43:
Mark 5:35-43
35 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?” 36 But overhearing what they said, Jesus said to the ruler of the synagogue, “Do not fear, only believe.” 37 And he allowed no one to follow him except Peter and James and John the brother of James. 38 They came to the house of the ruler of the synagogue, and Jesus saw a commotion, people weeping and wailing loudly. 39 And when he had entered, he said to them, “Why are you making a commotion and weeping? The child is not dead but sleeping.” 40 And they laughed at him. But he put them all outside and took the child’s father and mother and those who were with him and went in where the child was. 41 Taking her by the hand he said to her, “Talitha cumi,” which means, “Little girl, I say to you, arise.” 42 And immediately the girl got up and began walking (for she was twelve years of age), and they were immediately overcome with amazement. 43 And he strictly charged them that no one should know this, and told them to give her something to eat.
Was the Jairus’s daughter truly dead? It seems that this whole narrative hinges on this question. The servant came to Jairus and told him that his daughter was dead, but Christ said in verse 39 that the child was not dead, she was only sleeping. Which is it? Did Christ perform another work of miraculous healing or did he raise this girl from the dead? Here are four reasons to believe that Jairus’s daughter was truly dead.
First, all throughout the book of Mark, we have seen Christ purposefully obscure his ministry. When he teaches, he teaches in parables so that people will be left in their sin. When he heals, he tells people to tell no one what he has done for them. He sneaks away from the crowds to pray in the wilderness and quietly move from town to town. Christ purposefully works against the momentum his ministry has the potential to build. He did not come to be the conquering king, not this time. This time, he came to die on the cross and purchase himself a people at the cost of his own blood. So, Christ’s actions are consistent with what we have been seeing him do in other parts of the Gospel of Mark.
Second, we have to assume that the people of Jairus’s house were competent adults. Jairus was a ruler of the Synagogue. He was a powerful man in that society and was probably highly educated. He also had a household full of family and servants. He was a reasonably successful leader. We have to assume that the people of his house knew the signs of life and death.
Third, when Jairus receives the news, Jesus does not tell him that she is only sleeping. He tells him to believe. Believe in who? To believe in Christ, that he has the power to raise Jairus’s daughter. Jesus only tells the mourners at the house that the girl is not dead, she is only sleeping in order to hide the miracle that he is about to perform. It fits into his greater effort to hide the ministry that he is working with his disciples.
Lastly, when Jesus raises her from the dead, he tells the parents to give the girl something to eat. Christ does this to prove that she was not a spirit, but that she was a real child that required food and water. This was not some trick or some form of sorcery, Christ truly called this little girl back through the door of death to live again, because he is powerful and able to save her. Jairus’s daughter died, and only Jesus Christ had the power to reverse her death.
So far, this is Jesus’s greatest miracle. It is one thing to heal some people or calm some storms on the sea, or even cast out demons, but to bring someone back from the dead is a different thing entirely. Aside from Christ, there are only four other people in the Bible that raised people from the dead: Elijah, Elisha, Peter, and Paul. That is a pretty short list of some of the greatest saints to ever live. This is arguably the greatest miracle that Jesus performs, and only Jairus and his wife, Peter, James and John are in the room to witness it, and even then, they are told not to tell anyone? Why? Don’t you think that such an amazing miracle deserves just as amazing a crowd to witness it? The point of the miracle was not for the crowds to learn what Jesus can do, but for Peter, James, and John to learn who Jesus is.
These three men are the foundation of the Church once Christ ascends into heaven. Peter is the preacher, John is the thinker, and James is the leader that is martyred. All the other disciples will look to these three to guide them through the dark times that are about to come. They need this lesson. They need to learn that Christ has the power to reverse death.
This is a lesson that cannot be learned from a lecture. If I stood up hear and said that I have the power to bring someone back from the dead, and I lectured for three hours on the finer points of the method by which I could accomplish such a miraculous feat, at some point, someone in the room is going to stand up and say, “Prove it. Prove it, Crites. You say you can do this. Let’s see it buddy.” To learn that Christ has the power to reverse death is something that can only be learned through experience, and they desperately need to learn this lesson. There was a really important audience for Christ’s most powerful miracle. It was an audience of three.
I want to take a moment and think how this can help us think about disciplemaking. Christ is the great discipler. He is the great teacher from whom we are to learn and learn to teach. Christ taught the disciples that the kingdom of God would start small and eventually fill the whole world. How was he going to accomplish such an audacious goal? By reaching the masses through the man. In my mind, I think of this disciplemaking principle as the Steve Tucker Principle. Steve Tucker is an elder at Harvest and spent many hours and lunches teaching me how to be a better leader and Disciplemaker. I am sure Steve learned this from someone else, but I learned it from him. So for me, it is the Steve Tucker Principle.
The Steve Tucker Principle is this: disciplemaking is about reaching the masses through the man. It is impossible for anyone, even Christ, to disciple a mass crowd. The crowd is an unruly mass of humanity. The more people congregate together, the less people act like individuals and the more they become an irrational mob. The crowd is unwieldy and unmanageable.
The goal is to reach them, but it cannot be through a direct assault. We must reach the masses through the man. By focusing on a very few individuals and training those individuals to train other individuals, disciplemaking efforts are multiplied exponentially. Christ focused his greatest efforts on three, then in a similar but lesser way, he led the twelve. Through the twelve, he led the 72 and eventually he left the Church in their hands. Every single Christian that has lived since Christ ascended into heaven descends directly from one of those eleven men. Their ministry has literally covered the entire world.
In our first point, we saw that Christ has the power to heal what no one else can heal. While we were still enslaved to sin, Christ killed our sin in his flesh on the cross and healed us from our sicknesses. We must now live by faith in the freedom that Christ purchased for us in his own blood. In our second point, Mark showed us that Christ had the power to reverse death. The wonder of this miracle is that it was for such a small audience. It was really intended for his closest disciples because there were days coming where they would need to remember that Christ is the Lord over even death. It has no power over him.
Conclusion
Who is Christ? I want this question to be echoing in the minds of our Church over the coming months. We are studying this book so we can look into the face of our savior and answer this question: Who is Christ? He is Creator, King, Healer, and Lord over even death. I can’t wait to see what else Mark has to teach us about this man, Jesus from Nazareth, the Only begotten Son from the Father.