Don’t Be Afraid — Just Believe

Audio Transcript

This morning we will be back in the book of Mark as we continue our Unravel series, Teaching Through the Bible. We’re going to just do a shorter message this morning, but today we’ll be in Mark chapter 5, verses 21 to 43.

Being a part of this baby dedication and seeing these parents here with their children, knowing their hearts, knowing each of them, and how much they care for their children, how much they want to raise their children for the Lord—you know, it reminds me—my children are grown, many of yours are too, but we remember so fondly all of those early days. And you see parents raising their children, and there is something that happens when you have a child. It’s something inexplicable. Suddenly, you realize that for this child, you would lose sleep. You would spend money you don’t have. You would drive all night. You would sit for hours or days or weeks beside a hospital bed. You’d pray desperate prayers all for the sake of that child.

And that’s exactly where our passage begins today. With a father whose little girl is dying. And he throws everything aside to try and save her. Now this is just the next message in our series and it falls on today. And I just think this is very special.

May I remind you before we get to our verses this morning, last Sunday, Jesus had been teaching in Capernaum beside the Sea of Galilee. He’d had a very long, exhausting day. And He told His disciples to get into the boat, and with Him, and cross to the other side of the sea. It was evening when they left. And at some point along that journey, in the middle of the night, a violent storm arose. A storm so fierce that even the seasoned fishermen in the boat, Peter, James, John, and Andrew, who made their living on this sea, they thought they were going to die. And they cried out to Jesus and said, “Don’t You care that we’re perishing?” And Jesus stands and speaks those incredible, simple but powerful words: “Peace, be still.”

And we were told in the Scripture, in the Greek, it went from a mega storm to mega calm in an instant. The disciples were stunned by this, and it says they were terrified.

And they turned to one another and asked that famous question, “Who is this? Who is this? That even the wind and the sea obey Him?” And may I just say to you this morning, that is the question that every man and woman, boy and girl, ever born must answer before they die. Who is this?

And if you’re ignoring that question and running from that question, then you have, in a sense, already answered it.

Well, they reached the other side. In the verses that I’ll have to let you get to on your own, we’re told they reached the other side, and immediately upon stepping off the boat onto the shore, Jesus was confronted by a frightening man who came running out of the tombs. This man had been a terror there. People had tried to tie him up in chains, and he was demon-possessed. The demons in him broke the chains. He was violent. He lived in the graveyard.

And he came running up, and the demon in him was named Legion. It says, “We are many.” And the demon spoke out of this man to Jesus. Jesus didn’t introduce Himself and say, “Good evening. My name is Jesus of Nazareth.”

But this demon saw Jesus and knew who He was. And he spoke out of this man and said, “What have I to do with You, Jesus, Son of the Most High God?” And this is the second time now in our study through the life of Christ that we have seen a demon reveal the true identity of Jesus as being the Son of God. It’s interesting, no entity in the spirit world has a problem recognizing who Jesus is.

No demon has a problem recognizing that. It’s we humans who choose not to believe that Jesus is the Son of God. Well, Jesus cast the demons out of this man. He set him free. But the people in that area didn’t want anything to do with Jesus. And they asked Him to leave. And He did.

That’s something worth thinking about.

So they go back over the Sea of Galilee to where Jesus had previously been teaching, and we pick up now in Mark 5, verse 21. It says this,

“When Jesus had crossed over again by boat to the other side, a large crowd,” this is a great multitude, thousands of people, “gathered around Him beside the sea. Then one of the synagogue rulers named Jairus came there. And when he saw Jesus, he fell at His feet and pleaded with Him earnestly, saying, ‘My little daughter is at the point of death. Come and lay Your hands on her that she may be healed and live.'”

“So Jesus went with Him. And a great crowd followed Him and pressed around Him.”

In order to understand the gravity of what has just happened, we must understand who this man was. Jairus was a synagogue, the synagogue ruler there in that city. He was a man of importance, a man of reputation. Everyone in that town would have known who he was, maybe like the mayor of a town today, something like that. But remember, the religious leaders hated Jesus. The synagogue rulers, the Pharisees, the scribes, the Sadducees, the rabbis, they all hated Jesus.

We’ve already seen in previous weeks they dragged Jesus out of a synagogue and tried to throw Him off a cliff after He read Scriptures in the synagogue and said, “Today the Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing. I’m the one that Isaiah prophesied about,” in this very synagogue here where this man Jairus was the ruler. And we also saw a few months back Jesus healed a man there with a withered hand, and it says because He did this on the Sabbath, the leaders went out and immediately plotted how they might kill Jesus.

Was Jairus in that group? Don’t know. But no religious leader in that day would dare be caught associating with Jesus. But here’s Jairus, the synagogue ruler, with his face in the dirt before Jesus in a posture of humility and worship. He’s humiliating himself. He’s begging and pleading while the whole crowd watches.

This powerful, dignified man suddenly isn’t concerned about his position or his reputation, because when your child is dying, none of that matters.

And I love how simply it says, “So Jesus went with him.”

People on the other side of the sea just told Jesus to get out, and He left. This man begged Jesus to come with him, and Jesus went, just like that. Jesus went.

Jesus didn’t make sure Jairus’ theology was all in order. He didn’t make Jairus prove his worth. He didn’t ask Jairus what denomination he was part of. You know, all the stupid nonsense we waste time on today. A man begged for help, and Jesus went with him. And once again, we get a little glimpse into the compassionate heart of the Savior. But just as they set out, we read this in verses 25 and 26.

“And a woman was there who had suffered from bleeding for 12 years. She had suffered much under many physicians and had spent all she had. And she was no better, but rather grew worse.” Some of you can identify with that. You have a stack of medical bills at home. You understand how that system works. You’ve tried and tried and tried. You’ve tried all the doctors in town, but you’re just getting worse. This was the condition this woman was in.

She had no health. She had no money, but it’s worse than that. For 12 years, she had endured this disorder. Now, in our day, her condition would be hard enough, but under the old Levitical law of cleanliness, she would have been declared unclean.

She would have been cast out from society because anyone that she touched would also be defiled. They would be made unclean by simply touching her. It’s almost like being a leper.

She was legally untouchable. So for 12 years, she was forbidden from temple worship. For 12 years, she wasn’t allowed synagogue fellowship, excluded from all community events, no family gatherings.

She was forced to live cut off from everything that she cared about. But today, today she made up her mind. Nothing is going to stop her. News has spread far and wide about this teacher, this healer, this man with a kind heart who helps everyone who comes to Him. And she pushes her way through this massive crowd, legally defiling everyone she touches.

Verse 27.

“She had heard the reports about Jesus, and she came up behind Him in the crowd and touched His garment or His cloak. For she said, ‘If I can just touch His garments, I will be made well.'”

Matthew says she touched the hem of His garment. Luke says she touched the border of His garment. What are they talking about and why does that even matter? Well, this refers to the tassels that were sewn onto the end of the robe. Every religious Jewish man in that day wore, well, we call it a prayer shawl. That’s not quite right, but it’s a fair English translation.

And every one of those prayer shawls was required to have tassels sewn onto the bottom, on all the corners. These tassels were made of white thread with blue thread woven into them in a special way, and all of this was commanded by God way back in Numbers chapter 15. That’ll give you some good Sunday afternoon reading.

These tassels were considered to be the most sacred part of this garment because they represented God’s commands. And God said back there in Numbers 15 when He was giving the instructions for this particular garment for the men to wear, He said, “Every time you see those tassels, they should serve as a reminder to you to keep My commandments rather than running off into sin like you’re prone to do.” So these tassels represented God’s holy commandments. And for a ceremonially unclean woman to come and touch those tassels was unthinkable.

And yet, like Jairus, she was desperate, and when you’re desperate, you do anything.

Now, as I said, according to the law she defiled everyone she touched, but isn’t it interesting, we’re about to see when she touched Jesus, she didn’t defile Jesus. For the first time, that process was reversed, and His cleanliness rushes into her.

Verse 29, she reaches out and she touches the hem of His garment, and it says immediately her bleeding stopped. And she felt in her body that she was healed of her disease. What a remarkable thing. Now I’m going to read you something even more remarkable.

Verse 30, “And Jesus, immediately knowing in Himself that power had gone out from Him,”

What now?

How do we explain that? I don’t know.

Just pause here for one second. This is a remarkable statement to me because if you take this and you extend that out across the entire ministry of Jesus, every person He reached out and healed, does that mean every time He gave life or healing to someone that it took it out of Him?

We wonder why after this previous day of healing and helping people all day long, it said He was exhausted. I don’t know what this means, frankly. It’s beyond us, and it should be. This is remarkable. “Jesus, immediately knowing in Himself that power had gone out from Him, turned around in the crowd and said, ‘Who touched My clothes?'”

But His disciples, ever the brilliant fellas that they were, said to Him the obvious, “You see the crowd pressing around You, and yet You say, ‘Who touched Me?'” And He looked around to see who had done this.

Now some people get their theology all in a knot here, and there’s no reason to. Let me just tell you, Jesus never asked a question because He didn’t know the answer. He knew the very hearts of men. He knew their thoughts. He asked questions because they needed to know the answer. And He uses this as a teaching moment.

This woman who had been invisible for 12 years mattered. She mattered. She didn’t matter to anybody in that crowd but One.

Jesus didn’t just want her to have physical healing. He wanted to restore her dignity. You say, “Phil, you just making that up?” No, stay with me. Verse 33 and 34.

“But the woman, fearing and trembling,” boy, I bet she was, “knowing what had happened to her, came and fell down before Him and told Him the whole truth. And He said to her,” watch this, “‘Daughter. Daughter, your faith has made you well. Go in peace and be healed of your disease.'”

This is one of those tender moments in all of Scripture to me. And it’s the only time in the entire New Testament that Jesus ever directly called anyone daughter.

By the way, Jesus didn’t have to do this. He could have let her slip back into the crowd, you know, as a nameless recipient of His power, and He could have gone on His way. But He wanted her to know that He loved her. He wanted her to know that He saw her. He wanted her to know that she belonged.

You know, one of the most agonizing, emptying feelings in all of life is for people to feel they don’t belong anywhere to anyone. It’s gut-wrenching. And they go through life feeling invisible.

This was this woman, 12 years shunned by family, shunned by community and girlfriends, shunned by the religious system. For 12 years she’s had no family, and the first word out of Jesus’ mouth is “Daughter.” I wish I could have been there to take a snapshot of her face in that moment.

Did she smile and then just burst into tears? “Daughter?”

In one moment, she goes from unknown outcast to the beloved child of the Savior Himself. She came with her life in turmoil, and it says she left in peace. In peace. And that’s what Jesus does for everyone who comes to Him by faith.

Have you ever come to Him? Have you ever come before Him and told Him the whole truth? Just poured out your mess to Him? And then you’re just there on your knees, completely vulnerable, waiting for Him to either say, “I am so disgusted in you. What a loser you are. I want nothing to do with you.” Jesus could have said that, but that’s not Jesus. He said, “Daughter, I’m making you family.”

Have you ever come to Jesus and poured out your mess? And left in peace?

But just as she hears the best news of her life, Jairus, who we’ve forgotten all about now, hears the worst news of his. Verse 35. “While Jesus was still speaking, some people came from the ruler’s house and said, ‘Your daughter is dead. Why trouble the Teacher any further?'”

Put yourself in Jairus’ place. He’s just humiliated himself publicly, kneeling and begging in the dirt before the feet of this hated teacher named Jesus. He’s put his entire reputation on the line, and it would have all been worth it if Jesus hadn’t delayed. But He stopped to help this unknown woman while his daughter’s time ran out, and now she’s dead.

Imagine the emotions that flooded over him. “Oh, great, she got her miracle, and I missed mine.” He was devastated.

Have you ever felt passed over, like God had time for everyone else but you? Be honest. You watched the answer come for somebody else, you celebrated their good news, and then you went home to the same waiting, the same unanswered prayer. You ever been there?

And at some point, you quietly begin to wonder, “Lord, do You even see me? Did You forget about my need, Lord, while You’re out there doing miracles for everybody else? Did You forget about the thing I’ve been praying for for 12 years?”

That’s exactly where Jairus is. He’s watching somebody else’s prayer get answered while his entire world crumbles around him. But look at what Jesus does next. Man, this is like, this is like a lightning bolt out of the clear blue. Verse 36.

“As soon as Jesus heard what they said, He told the ruler of the synagogue, ‘Do not be afraid, only believe.'”

Now, we can pretend to be super spiritual all we want, but I’m telling you, I don’t know what I would have done in that moment. I don’t think I would have taken that too well.

We know for sure, Jairus had enough faith to believe that Jesus could heal his sick daughter, but did he have enough faith to believe that Jesus could raise his dead daughter? Because those are two very different things. At least they are in our estimation. But they’re not in God’s. To Him, one is just as easy as the other. That’s why He could say with confidence, “Jairus, Jairus, just believe. Just believe.”

I don’t want to take time on this, but I’ll just mention it to you in total honesty. In preparing this sermon over the last month or so, I realized, I don’t even want to share this because I get tired of embarrassing myself up here, but if it helps you, that’s good. I realized I have limits on my faith. There are some things I can pray with faith and believing that God will do, but then your child’s just died, and Jesus says, “Hey, don’t worry. Just believe.” I don’t think my faith goes that far. Yours?

Oh, to have this faith. My goodness.

So they set off again for Jairus’s house, and when they get there, they’re met by, the following verses say, they’re met by, you know, people weeping and wailing loudly, was the custom of the day, that the mourners were already there. It was a loud commotion. And Jesus says something shocking and highly offensive. Verse 39, “When Jesus went inside, He said to them, ‘Why are you making a commotion and weeping? The child is not dead, but sleeping.'”

Now, come on.

It says He took Peter, James, and John with Him. Did one of them lean over and go, “Hey, Jesus, that’s a bit too far. That’s not the right thing to say now.” I heard somebody say something at a funeral one time to the widow, and I was just like, “Oh, man, no, not now.”

That’s the wrong time. And I’ve done that too, by the way. It’s how we all learn and grow, I guess. But, I mean, what a thing to say in this moment. I mean, did one of them say, “Hey, that’s not funny. That’s not cool.”

And it says they ridiculed Him. I mean, it wasn’t laughing. It’s like they mocked Him. It’s what it means. Who could blame them? They know the girl is dead. This guy shows up and says she’s just sleeping.

What does Jesus do?

He puts them all out of the house. What’s He doing? He’s getting rid of every unbelieving voice.

Can I also just drop this in? Are there any unbelieving voices in your life that you need to get rid of?

Do you have people in your life who are a dark influence on you, who are chipping away at your faith? I’m not saying be rude to people, none of that, but be careful. Be careful who’s in your circle.

Jesus gets rid of every unbelieving voice. And then it says He takes the father and the mother and Peter, James, and John, and they go into where the child is. Verse 41.

“Then He took the child by the hand and said to her, ‘Talitha kumi,’ which means, ‘Little girl, I say to you, arise.'” Immediately the girl got up and walked around. She was 12 years old, and they were overcome with amazement. It means they lost their senses. They were beside themselves. Verse 43, “Then Jesus gave strict orders that no one should know about this, and He told them to give her something to eat.”

What a touching scene this is. I have to mention this. This phrase, Talitha kumi, some people think that this is some kind of magic incantation. That’s utter nonsense. This is not abracadabra. This was a very common phrase in Aramaic. It was a term of endearment that meant little girl or little child. But the etymology of this word, you go all the way back to its roots, what it meant originally was young lamb.

What Jesus actually said in that vernacular was something closer to “Little lamb, get up.” It’s what a father might whisper to his child on a sleepy Sunday morning, “Hey, sweetie, time to get up.” The preciousness of this moment.

And immediately the girl got up.

We’re given the detail here that she was 12 years old. Hang on to that for just a minute, would you? And then Jesus said, “Give her something to eat.” Now, I just have to, I got to ask, like, again, have you ever been in a conversation with people that was so intense about whatever, good or bad, but it was clear what was being talked about here, and people were leaning in. I mean, the moment was just thick. And then someone says something totally out of place, and everybody looks like, “Seriously? Can you not read the room?”

After performing a resurrection, this comment seems too ordinary to even mention, but it’s teaching us something.

Jesus doesn’t just care about her existence. He also cares that the little girl is hungry. How beautiful is this? “Yes, I just performed a resurrection,” but He’s not going around the room taking high fives and signing autographs. He says, “Hey, little girl’s hungry. Get her something to eat.” This is incredible.

And again, we see the kind, compassionate, loving heart of our Savior.

I told you, you study the Gospels, you study the life of Christ and get to know Him, it will wreck you. It will wreck you.

Well, I’m going to shut this down. These events began with a prominent man begging Jesus for help and an outcast woman just trying to touch Him. They were complete opposites in that culture, but Jesus received them both.

Whoever you are, if you come to Him by faith, He will welcome you, whoever you are.

Now I want you to think about this as we wrap this up. This woman had suffered for 12 years. That was the entire lifespan of this little girl. For 12 long years, this woman had lived in constant pain while this little girl lived in the joy of childhood. And then in one shocking moment, their stories collided with Jesus. After 12 years of suffering, the woman found new life. After 12 years of life, the little girl faced death. The woman waited 12 years for healing. The little girl received hers in one day.

See, sometimes Jesus answers in the moment of crisis. And sometimes He answers after years of waiting. But He’s never too early, and He’s never too late.

That delay that Jairus thought was the worst thing to ever happen to him actually became an even greater miracle than he had originally asked for, because Jesus didn’t just heal his daughter, He raised her from the dead. What looked like an interruption was actually divine timing. Hello, church.

And you know, when it comes down to it, I think we all live here to some degree. We pray, and we wait. We trust, and we wonder if God is coming.

Maybe right now you’re carrying a situation that just feels hopeless. Your prayers seem unanswered. Circumstances are only growing darker by the day. This passage reminds all of us that Jesus is not intimidated by delays. He’s not overwhelmed by the impossible, and He never arrives one second too late.

What is it you’re dealing with in your life that you think Jesus has messed up? You see others, they seem to be blessed, you’re continuing to carry this circumstance.

Today, whether you feel like the grieving father or whether you feel like the waiting woman, I would encourage you to run to Jesus. I would say to you this morning, your hope in Him is never wasted. Your faith in Him never goes without reward. I would encourage you to turn to Him today and trust in Him—the very source of life.