We continually have before us
pictures of God's salvation. As we go through this passage
in Mark's Gospel, we'll see that this saving of this woman like
the other miracles in the Gospels are pictures of the way the Lord
Jesus saves his church collectively and saves each member of that
church individually. And so we have talked often about
the fact that because God is infinite and the Lord Jesus is
holy and God in every aspect, He knows absolutely everything
about everyone, every member of His bride. In fact, Psalm
147.5 says that the knowledge of the Lord is infinite. And so we'll be looking at the
situation of Jairus next week. I just wanted to look at this
particular story of this woman. So the scene has been set, hasn't
it, in Mark 5, 21. The people of the Gadarenes had
rejected the Lord Jesus and he had now crossed back over the
lake. He crossed over in 21 in a boat
to the other side. And as happens with the Lord
Jesus in so many of these stories, there was a large crowd gathered
to him so that he stayed by the seashore. And then one of the
synagogue officials named Jairus, an incredibly important man in
this town, came up and on seeing him, fell at his feet. And he begged him, he implored
him earnestly saying, my little daughter is at the point of death. Please come and lay your hands
on her so that she will get well and live. And he went off with
him and a large crowd followed him and pressed in on him. And so that's the scene, isn't
it? Here we have this crowd who has gathered because of the miraculous
works of the Lord Jesus they've seen again and again. And here
a synagogue official comes, an important man of this town, comes
and he begs Jesus to go and so we have this excited, thronging,
pressing crowd. And they went off with him in
Mark 5.24. so the Lord Jesus acceded to
the man's demands and he went off and this large crowd followed
and pressed in and so there was a woman in verse 25 a woman who
had been bleeding had a hemorrhage for 12 years and so This woman, and she'd endured
much at the hands of many physicians and spent all she had, and it
was not helped at all, but it had grown worse. And so, it's
very easy for us to miss the significance of what's happening
here in the life of this woman. And that's why on the back of
your notes I've actually copied out those verses for you out
of Leviticus. So this woman had personal distress,
the fact that she had to live with this continual bleeding. the woman suffered embarrassment
publicly, but the woman also suffered under the law. And the
law says, as you keep reading through these verses, I've underlined
that word, unclean. 519, whoever touches her will
be unclean. She is unclean and everything
that touches her is unclean. Anyone who touches her bed, shall
be unclean till evening. Whoever touches anything she
sits on shall wash his clothes and bathe in water and will be
unclean." Unclean, unclean. She is unclean. Everything she
sits on is unclean. Whoever touches anything of hers
is unclean. The picture is a picture of the
curse. the sadness of living in this
sin-cursed world, the uncleanness of all humanity. Isaiah talks
about it, doesn't he, that from the sole of their foot to their
head, even to the head, there is nothing sound in it, only
bruises, welts, raw wounds. It's a picture of all of God's
children, all of humanity, outside of the garden. But the uncleanness
is an uncleanness that defiles everything it touches. It's not
just a picture of this woman's situation, it's a picture of
all of our situations, isn't it? That sin lives in us, and
sin is contagious. The reality of my flesh, as my
wife will tell you if you have any doubts whatsoever, is that
the things I touch and the things I'm closest to and even the things
that I love the most in this world are things that are defiled
and hurt by my sin. We cannot live with each other
without sin. the sin that's in our hearts
affecting ourselves and everything around us. And it cuts us off
from God. And that was the other problem
that this poor lady had, is that she was separated from the worship
of God. She wasn't allowed to go to synagogue. She wasn't allowed to go to temple.
The blessings that are there in this Mosaic Covenant are not
available to her personally. So she's in a terrible situation. But the situation of sin also
in Mark's Gospel, the Lord Jesus wants us to be very, very clear
that sin is not just something on the outside. The total contagiousness
of sin is a picture that sin, according to Mark 7.20, is what
comes out of a man. is what defiles him. It's not
the things on the outside, the things on the outside, the sins
that we do, the cruelties and the horrible thoughts and the
other things that we do are just on the outside so that we would
see that sin is in the heart. For the Lord Jesus says in Mark
7.21, for from within Out of the heart of men proceed
evil thoughts, fornications, thefts, murders, adulteries,
the deeds of coveting and wickedness, as well as deceit, sensuality,
envy, slander, pride and foolishness. All of these things proceed from
within and defile the man. And so the sin sickness that
all of us has is an uncleanness. And it's a disabling sickness.
This poor lady had suffered many things at the hands of many physicians. So she had been by this stage
to every doctor in town. It's extraordinary to read some
of the cures that they tried to bring to women who suffered
like this. And it's just appalling to think
of what they had to do. But also it was expensive. This
woman was probably a woman of some means because it says that
she actually spent all that she had And so she actually had some
money. So many people lived from day
to day, but this woman actually had some money. She had been
to every doctor in town, the quacks, the charlatans. You can imagine what people do
today. They'll go to any doctor. She'd been to faith healers,
she'd been to all that she could, but nothing had happened. Not
only had she not got any better, she'd actually grown worse. And so it's a picture, isn't
it, that activities of the flesh without the Lord Jesus do not
help. We can go to Dr. Decision and
Dr. Be Good and Dr. Free Will and
Dr. Ceremony and Dr. Right Church
and Dr. Excitement and Dr. Emotion. We
can go to all the doctors out there But religion without the
Lord Jesus will never help you. In fact, it's part of the grace
in this passage, isn't it? That all other avenues of help
have been cut off and this lady is graciously shut up to the
one place. where there is real help for
her. And so all of the activities of men in religion just make
them worse. So religion without Christ will
never help you. It only puts you in a worse condition. But we have this crowd here as
well. The crowd came to the Lord Jesus, as crowds do in many places
today, go to church for all sorts of reasons. They go for curiosity,
they might go for excitement, they might go out of fear of
judgment. So many go and have gone in the
past because of social pressure. It was the right thing to do
socially. And so these people pressed upon
the Lord Jesus, but we know from the gospel accounts that so many
who witnessed what Jesus had done and followed him out of
curiosity, when he truly revealed himself to them and proclaimed
his gospel to them, they went away in droves. Just read John
chapter six, where the Lord Jesus preached to a crowd that may
have been 20,000, and by the time he finished, he'd preached
them down to 12. There were crowds that followed
the Lord Jesus and crowds that witnessed Him. But the cure comes
to this lady not from just knowing about Jesus. And this is the
beauty of this picture that we have before us. The cure comes
as this woman comes in faith and she touches the Lord Jesus.
And so it's a work of God's providence, isn't it? That God was in charge
of all of these events. It was God who moved across the
lake the previous day, possibly. It was God who was sent away
by the Gadarenes that He wouldn't live in their land. And it was
God who came back at this particular moment for this particular lady. So again, as we spoke to the
children earlier, God's activities are always perfect. Her sickness
was not an accident, but it was a work of God for her soul. And it was a work of God to bring
her to the Lord Jesus. It was a work of God to shut
her up so that there was no hope for her outside of the Lord Jesus. And so this is the time of love
in her life. And you might ask if God loved
her so much, why did he wait so long? Why 12 years for this
lady? Why in our pain does it go on
longer and longer than we think? At the end of the day, God is
God and his timing is always perfect. not only for that particular
person, but for everyone else around. God is working all things
for the good of those who love Him and call according to His
purposes. So often when we're in pain,
we cry out, why, O Lord? And how long, O Lord? And the
psalmists are honest about it. God's people cry out, how long? But God causes His people to
wait for a specific purpose. and a specific time. And we must
remember that no matter what our pain is in this world, the
Lord Jesus knows about it intimately. There is no pain and no affliction
that ever comes to one of God's children that the Lord Jesus
hasn't experienced. Do we have physical pain? The
Lord Jesus knows about physical pain. Do we have pain in our
families? The Lord Jesus had pain in His
family. Are we misunderstood? The Lord
Jesus was misunderstood. Are we rejected by people we
reach out to? The Lord Jesus was rejected by
people. He was a man of sorrows and familiar
with suffering. And so often in the Scriptures
we also find that the Lord takes His people to the place where
there is no other hope. There is no other cure. There
is no other place to turn to. God's children are caused to
desperately need the Savior. They desperately need the Savior.
And so this is a work of providence. And it's also a work of the word
because she'd actually heard about the Lord Jesus. She'd heard
about his miracles. She'd heard that he was a man
of compassion who healed. And she was a lady who came in
humility to the Lord Jesus. She came in this pressing crowd
And I'm not sure how she did it, because as an outcast, she
shouldn't have been there. And anyone she touched or anyone
who happened to bump into her was unclean. She shouldn't have
been there, but she came from behind in this crowd. She came
in humility, not wanting to be seen. But she'd heard about the
Lord Jesus, and she came in faith. She came in faith. She believed,
it says, that if she just touched the hem of His garment... Now,
we know from the Scriptures that the Lord Jesus can heal without
people touching Him. But at the end of the day, it's
not the nature of our faith or the strength of our faith, it's
the object of our faith. It, in a sense, was wrong for
her to believe that. But the Lord Jesus honoured the
fact that she came to Him. So faith is a gift of God, isn't
it? Ephesians 1.19 talks of His greatness
toward us who believe according to the working of His mighty
power. Ephesians 2.8 says, For it is
by grace you have been saved, and that not of yourselves. It's the gift of God. In Philippians
1.29 there it says, For to you it has been granted. It's a gift
on behalf of Christ, not only to believe in Him, but to suffer
for His sake. And in Colossians it says that
we are buried with him in baptism in which you were raised with
him through faith in the working of God who raised him from the
dead. So it's a work of faith, isn't
it, in verse 28? For she thought, if I just touch
his garments I will get well. So this woman's faith was a gift
from God. But like all the gifts that God
gives, it actually becomes ours, doesn't it? He says, it's her
faith. She came, she believed, and according
to the Scriptures, she was made willing on the day of His power.
But she was willing, and she was constrained by grace, and
she did come. And then we see the healing of
this woman because it was from God's power, wasn't it? The power
came from God. That power had proceeded from
Him and immediately the flow of her blood was dried up and
she was felt in her body that she was healed of her affliction. So she was healed. And then the
Lord Jesus does something remarkable in the midst of this crowd and
remarkable for the apostles. He immediately, Jesus, perceiving
in himself that power proceeded from him, had gone forth, turned
around in the crowd and said, who touched my garments? We've
got to remember the context here. This is the crowd that is, in
a sense, rushing to Jairus' house, where a little girl, according
to Matthew, is now dead. And certainly that will be seen
later on. And so in the midst of this crowd,
which is on this extremely important mission, the Lord Jesus stops
and he says, who touched me? He calls for confession from
this lady. He's not asking who touched me
because he didn't know, just like an examiner asks questions.
He doesn't ask questions because he figures you don't know. He's
asking questions because he figures that you do know. The Lord Jesus
knows everything. He knew who had touched him.
He knew what had happened. The whole event of this day was
purposed. for this very thing. And so he
calls on her to come forward and to confess. It's with mouth
that confession is made unto salvation according to Romans
10.10. And this lady came forward and told all the truth. When God heals by faith and God
delivers, we can tell all the truth. There's nothing left in
our lives that we need to hide from God. There's nothing that
we need to hide from God who knows absolutely everything.
And she comes fearing and trembling. which is extraordinary, isn't
it? As we saw with the apostles as they crossed the lake, they
feared for their lives. And then when they saw the Lord
Jesus in His glory still in that storm, they feared a very great
fear. So there is a natural fear that
people feel, but there is a godly fear that comes into people's
lives when they meet the Lord Jesus and see Him in His glory.
It's an awe, a sense of awe and wonder at the reality of who
the Lord Jesus is. It's meeting Him, and when people
meet the Lord Jesus and see who they really are, they are brought low. And so
also I think the Lord Jesus wanted people to take notice that she
was healed by power that had gone out from Him, rather than
being healed by some magical touching of His clothes. The
Lord Jesus wants to encourage faith. The Gospels are written
to build faith, to encourage faith, to grow faith, to nurture
faith. And so He wants to encourage
faith that rests on Him personally and not on other things. In Mark
3, 10 people begin touching Him that they might be healed. And
in Mark 6 it gets even worse where people are just wanting
to touch the hem of his garment as this lady had done, that they
might be healed. But the Lord Jesus wants this
confession so that people know that they're healed by grace
and not by magic. So there's a confession. And
when she comes, this lady who now is fearing and trembling,
but as Isaiah 35.10 says, the ransom of the Lord shall return
to Zion with songs and everlasting joy upon their heads. They shall
obtain joy and gladness and sorrow and sighing will flee away. He brings her to a point of confession
that he might give her a commendation. the Lord commends the faith,
the faith which he gives. As he says of Paul, after a life
of faith that he has given and he has nurtured, he says, well
done, good and faithful servant. is he wants to commend faith.
He's both the object of faith, and as we know from Hebrews 12,
he's actually the author of faith. And so he wants to nurture her
faith. He wants to grow her faith. He
wants her to be someone who confesses publicly before people that the
Lord Jesus has done this remarkable thing. So he commends her. And what a commendation it is. If you read with me, you have
these wonderful words. in verse 34. This woman who had
no hope unless Jesus had crossed the lake that day, had no hope
unless she could get close and touch the Lord Jesus. Now she
is described by God in the most beautiful, beautiful way. He says, daughter. He's expressing
the fact that there is a relationship between the Lord Jesus and this
person. Just as the paralytic man in
Mark 2 is called son, your sins are forgiven, here it's daughter. And then in the Greek, it's a
beautiful expression, daughter, your faith has saved you. So these are pictures of salvation.
No doubt she needed healing in her body, otherwise she would
have died. But the message of the story
is that she believed if she could just touch him, she would be
saved. And the Lord Jesus commends her faith. Your faith, he says,
faith that is mine to give But when God gives, he makes sure
that people receive it. Your faith has saved you. And then he says, go in peace. In fact, it means go into peace. You have now come out of a life
of darkness and trouble. Now you go into a life of peace
because of who the Lord Jesus is. He's transferred his people
out of the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of light. Go
into peace. And then he says, be healed. Be made whole, it means. made
whole of your affliction." And that word affliction is the word
scourge, which means that it's an affliction that they acknowledged
had come from God and was part of living in this world. Be healed,
be made whole of your affliction. In Galatians 3.13, we know how
we are saved. The Lord Jesus had to bear all
of that curse, that uncleanness that cut her off from her society,
cut her off from God, caused her to be defiled and defiling
of everything she touched. was a curse under that law. Galatians
3.13 talks about our Lord Jesus Christ redeemed us from the curse
of the law having become a curse for us for it is written Cursed
is everyone who hangs on a tree. The Lord Jesus so identified
himself with this lady he calls his daughter, that in the not
too distant future, he would go to Calvary's hill. He would
bear the curse of God. He would bear the wrath of God
for all of her sins. And when the sword of God's justice
has finished its work on our Savior, it cries out, it is finished. Enough. And in that one event,
that wonderful event of the Lord Jesus' life and death and resurrection,
she is made whole. She is freed from the curse.
She is now with God qualified, it says in Galatians 1.12. She
is now fit. She's fit to enter heaven. She
who was unclean, unclean, unclean is now holy, spotless and blameless
before God. And so life as Christians begins
in faith. And life for Christians is lived
in faith. We stand in faith. We walk in
faith and not by sight. We have peace with God by faith. We see the glory of God by faith. And we die by faith. And so it's not the strength
of our faith, but the object of our faith. It's God who has
wounded and God who heals, Deuteronomy 32 says. And so great faith in
the story of this lady is mixed with great humility. And when
people enter into the sweetest communion with God in faith,
We actually see Him as He is and experience Him as He is and
know ourselves to be unclean, but know ourselves in the Lord
Jesus. With our lives hidden with Christ
in God, we are holy and spotless and blameless. And so the one
question is, I can't see into your lives. I can't see faith. The question the Lord Jesus is
asking us, do you believe? Do you cling to the Lord Jesus
as if your life depended upon it? It does depend upon it. There is no hope outside of Him,
but what a gracious Saviour He has. When we call, when we cry
out to Him, He comes, He heals, He restores, He makes whole. We have a wonderful Saviour.
We come like this lady with nothing and we go from our time with
our Saviour clothed in His righteousness. He not only gives faith, but
He nurtures it. If we're struggling with faith,
we go to the author of faith. And He will give faith. He's a great Savior. Let's pray.