The title of today's sermon is
Mercy to Sinners. Mercy to Sinners. And you'll
see where I get that title as we read through these verses,
starting at verse 9. Mercy to Sinners. Before we read
the scripture, though, let's ask the Lord to be with us. Father,
we pray that you would be with us in your word as we look into
it and we think about it and we ask the question, am I one to whom you sent your
son to die on the Calvary's cross and raised him from the dead
and seated him on your throne? and sent this word, the good
news of mercy to sinners. Lord, we pray that from your
word you would answer that in the hearts of all who are here.
We would not presume upon your mercy. When we hear your word
preached, we would understand that it is the message from heaven
and carries with it the full authority of the throne of God.
And we would humble ourselves by your grace and give attention
to what you've said, and believe on the Lord Jesus Christ by your
almighty power working in us, giving us this life-giving faith.
Dear Lord, we pray, open to us what Christ has done in these
words from your word. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.
Matthew chapter 9, verse 9. Jesus had just left the country
of the Gadarenes, The people of the country had told him and
asked him to depart, and he did leave there. And for them, it
was a judgment. He left that place, but for these,
to where Jesus came, it was a mercy. And so we pick it up in verse
9. It says, "...and as Jesus passed forth..." I'm sorry, this
is actually further on than the Gadarenes. This is actually the
miracle right after Jesus raised the paralyzed man from his bed. He had been brought to Jesus
by four friends and let down through the roof. And Jesus first
forgave him of his sins and then raised him from his bed. And
so that's where we are here. But nevertheless, all of this
was as a result of him going back from the country of the
Gadarenes to Capernaum. So in verse 9 it says, And as
Jesus passed forth from thence, he saw a man named Matthew sitting
at the receipt of custom. The receipt of custom would be
where they collect taxes. And he said to him, Follow me. And he arose and followed him. And it came to pass, as Jesus
sat at meat in the house, and it was actually Matthew's house,
Behold, many publicans and sinners came and sat down with him and
his disciples." So it must have been a large home, a place where
many publicans and many sinners could gather with all of Jesus'
disciples. And now Matthew, who was just
called by Jesus, having himself been a publican, a tax collector,
he sits there in his own house with Jesus and his friends, undoubtedly
his publican friends and the sinners. They're all sitting
there in the house with Jesus. Verse 11, And when the Pharisees
saw it, they said unto his disciples, I don't know why they didn't
ask Jesus directly, but they said to his disciples, Why eateth
your master with publicans and sinners? But when Jesus heard
that, he said to them, They that be whole need not a physician,
but they that are sick. But go ye and learn what that
meaneth. I will have mercy and not sacrifice,
for I am not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance. Then came to him the disciples
of John, saying, Why do we and the Pharisees fast oft, but thy
disciples fast not? And Jesus said to them, Can the
children of the bride-chamber mourn? as long as the bridegroom
is with them. But the days will come when the
bridegroom shall be taken from them, and then shall they fast.
No man puts a piece of a new cloth onto an old garment, for
that which is put in to fill it up taketh from the garment,
and the rent is made worse. Neither do men put new wine into
old bottles, else the bottles break, not glass bottles, but
leather pouches where they put wine. And the wine runneth out,
and the bottles perish. But they put new wine into new
bottles, and both are preserved. While he spake these things to
them, behold, there came a certain ruler and worshipped him, saying,
My daughter is even now dead, but come and lay thy hand upon
her, and she shall live. And Jesus arose and followed
him, and so did his disciples. Now, while they're going, Jesus
following the man and his disciples with Jesus. "...Behold, a woman
which was diseased with an issue of blood twelve years came behind
him and touched the hem of his garment. For she said within
herself, If I may but touch his garment, I shall be whole. But Jesus turned him about, and
when he saw her, he said, Daughter, be of good comfort, thy faith
hath made thee whole." And the woman was made whole from that
hour. And when Jesus came into the ruler's house and saw the
minstrels and the people making a noise, now he's at the man's
house whose daughter was dying, He said to them, give place,
for the maid is not dead, but sleepeth. And they laughed him
to scorn. But when the people were put
forth, he went in and took her by the hand, and the maid arose,
and the fame thereof went abroad into all that land." Now, it's often the case that
when I read scripture, I'll look at the entire text, and I won't
understand really what's being said. until I see there one text
that explains, as an anchor, the entire context. And that's
the way this text of scripture is written, I believe. We start
with Matthew. He had been sitting there collecting
taxes. A man had just been raised up
who was paralyzed. not only raised up from his being
paralyzed, but also forgiven all his sins. Matthew sitting
not far away, it appears, sitting at the receipt of custom, because
it says in verse 9, as Jesus passed forth from thence, as
he left the man who had been paralyzed and goes along his
way, he sees Matthew and then he called to Matthew. So here's
Matthew, collecting taxes, bringing in his money, doing all that
he would normally do, evidently oblivious to the fact that a
huge crowd of people were gathered in this one house where Jesus
raised this man up. And he calls him. And then, publicans
and sinners join Matthew in Matthew's house with Jesus. And they're
eating there. And the Pharisees come along.
And they find a fault with the Lord Jesus Christ. They find
a fault with Him because He's eating. He's actually eating
and drinking with these publicans and sinners. And He was supposedly
a man of God. Why would He be eating and drinking
with publicans and sinners? They didn't. And so they found
a fault with that. Jesus understood what they were
asking his disciples. And he quotes a place from Hosea
6.6, and I won't turn there, but he says in verse 13, go and
learn what that means. And he quotes it. I will have
mercy and not sacrifice. And then he explains it. For
I, himself, Jesus, he says, I am not come to call the righteous,
but sinners to repentance." He said, the whole, those who are
healthy, they don't need a doctor. It's the sick who need a doctor. And he compares sickness with
sin. He says, I've not come to call
the righteous, they're the well, they're the healthy, the whole,
but sinners to repentance. And I believe that one statement
of our Lord in verse 13 explains everything in this context. The
Lord Jesus Christ came to save, to call sinners, to call them
to repentance. And so we see the next thing
here happening, that the disciples of John come to Jesus and they
ask Him, they come to Jesus and they ask Jesus, why do we, the
disciples of John and the Pharisees, often fast? We go without food,
we afflict our souls, we mourn. Why don't your disciples fast?
And Jesus explained why. He says, because the bride doesn't
mourn when the bridegroom is with her. And these, my disciples,
were compared to the bride, and he compares himself to the bridegroom.
And then the next thing that happens is a man who's a ruler
of the synagogue comes to Jesus and pleads with him. He says,
my daughter is even now dead. And if you read Mark and Luke's
account, she was dying and near death. And so he asked Jesus
to come with him. And amazingly, Jesus follows
him. And on the way, a woman comes
up in the crowd, and she had been sick for 12 years, and she
touched his garment, and she was made completely whole. And
then, after that, Jesus finds out who did it, and he calls
her forth, and she explains to the whole crowd and to Jesus
what happened. And after that, Jesus goes on
and raises this man's daughter from the dead. That whole context
there is meant to illustrate to us how that the Lord Jesus
Christ came to save sinners. And if we understand that, we'll
understand the entire context. Jesus Christ came into the world
to save sinners. That's what it says in 1 Timothy
1.15. That's what it says throughout
all of Scripture. And this is contrary to the way
we naturally think. We think, I do, and maybe I can
speak for myself because I only know what I think, but Scripture
supports this claim that I'm about to make. We naturally think
that God is good to good people and He's not good to bad people.
That's what we naturally think. But the Lord Jesus says here
in this text that He came for this purpose to show mercy to
sinners. In fact, he rebukes the Pharisees
who found fault with him for showing mercy to sinners. He
rebukes them. He says, you need to go and learn
what this means. And God, he quotes from Hosea,
he says, I will have mercy and not sacrifice, for I'm not come
to call the righteous but sinners to repentance. Mercy and not
sacrifice. Sacrifice represents everything
that we can do in order to try to attract God's favor to us. Sacrifice means I'm depriving
myself of something in order to make myself acceptable to
God. Cain did that. The oldest son
of Adam and Eve. First born child of the entire
earth. He brings a great big basket
of fruits and vegetables and all that he had brought from
the field. He worked hard for it. Laboring in order to produce
this fruit. And he brings it to God and he
was rejected. Because the Lord Jesus Christ
didn't come to save the righteous, but sinners. The first thing
we learn from this truth is that God only saves sinners. God only saves sinners. Now,
I don't know about you, but that's the most comforting thing I could
have ever found in scripture, that the Lord Jesus Christ came
to save sinners. It's meant to comfort us. When
I hear those words, stress leaves my body. God sent his son into
the world to save sinners. I want to take you to a verse
in Psalms, another one of my favorite verses, and I probably
wear these out for you that hear me preaching from week to week,
but look at Psalm chapter 25. Psalm chapter 25, in verse 11,
the psalmist says this, he says, "'For thy name's sake, O Lord,
And for thy namesake, it means do it for what you're going to
get out of it. Do it because you're good. Do
it for your glory. Do it according to your character
and your perfections and your person. For thy namesake, O Lord,
find a way. Pardon my iniquity. Why? For it is great. My sin
is great and I need a great God to find a great way to pardon
it. That's what sinners plead. When we come to God pleading
for mercy from God, we can anchor We can bring with us the warrant
of our prayer from God's Word that God Himself put it in His
Word for sinners to come to Him in prayer and say, O Lord, for
Thy name's sake, pardon my iniquity, for it is great. If you have
a little iniquity, just a little sin, then you need only a little
Savior. But if you are a great sinner,
then you need a great Savior. And the Lord Jesus Christ is
a great Savior. And He came to save great sinners. The Apostle Paul says in 1 Corinthians
15. I'm the least of the apostles. I'm not even fit to be called
an apostle. Because I persecuted the church.
And then in Ephesians 3.9 he says, I'm the least of all saints. Of all the people the Lord saved,
I'm the least. And then in 1 Timothy 1.15 he
says, Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners of
whom I am the chief. Not I was, but I am the chief. The Lord Jesus Christ only saves
sinners. And so when he comes by Matthew's
table, where Matthew is collecting his taxes, and here's a man who
seems to have been ignoring the crowd that followed Jesus. It
was as if As if he had no interest. He's more interested in what
he's getting in his tax collecting. The money he's gathering and
what he's going to do with it. Thinking about what he's going
to spend his next paycheck on. His mind is completely absorbed
with everything but Christ. And he's hated. He's not one
of these people that people look up to. He's a publican. He's
from the IRS. He's somebody who takes money
unjustly. That was the claim. He sat in
the seat of government taking more than his share in order
to enrich himself and spend it on himself. And Jesus comes and
he says to him, follow me. Follow me. That was his command.
come to me come to me isn't that isn't that uh... something
we want to hear you see if the lord jesus christ doesn't come
to us like matthew if we're like matthew and we are because remember
what is this text teaching us how god saves sinners but if
he doesn't come to us like matthew and he doesn't see us oblivious
to Him. Not caring about ourselves, about
God, and about our sin, and about spiritual things, but only being
caring for ourselves. Selfish, that's what we are.
Completely absorbed in what we are and what we do. Unless God
doesn't intervene and interrupt our lives and insert Himself
into us, our lives, then we'll remain just like that, sitting
at the tax collector's table, collecting taxes until Jesus
comes. But He came to this man, Matthew. The name Matthew means gift of
God. God gave Matthew to the Lord
Jesus Christ. That's what his name means. Gift
of God. It means that God gave him to Christ to save him. Now, Jesus says in John chapter
10 that he is the great shepherd and his people are his sheep.
And then he says in verse 29 that God the Father gave his
people to him to save. The shepherd, was given the sheep
to save. And whose responsibility is it
to care for the sheep? The shepherd. How does the shepherd
do that? He lays down his life for his
sheep. David, King David, when he was
guarding his father's sheep, had to protect the sheep from
a lion and a bear, all kinds of animals. He laid his life
down for the sheep. The Lord Jesus Christ laid down
his life for those God the Father gave to him to save. He came
into the world to save sinners. And that's how he did it. He
laid his life down for his sheep. Matthew is just like us. I want to be like Matthew, don't
you? I want God to give me to the Lord Jesus Christ to save
me. If He doesn't, if the Lord Jesus
doesn't come to me and save me, there's nothing I can do because
I'm uninterested. I'll be indifferent, or I will
follow every wrong way. I will follow every wrong way,
and the Lord, if He just leaves me to myself, I'll bring myself
into damnation." But listen to these texts of scriptures. This
is what God does. God saves us in spite of us. It says in Lamentations 3.32,
"...though He caused grief, yet will he have compassion according
to the multitude of his mercies." God causes grief, and yet, even
though we deserve that grief, God has mercy. God has mercy. That's what it says. And then
he says, this is our condition before the Lord saves us. We're
dead in sins, we walk according to the course of this world,
according to every wrong principle. We all had our conversation,
our behavior in time past in the lust of our flesh, fulfilling
the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature
children of wrath, even as others, but God. who is rich in mercy."
See, God intervenes in our lives. "...who is rich in mercy, for
his great love wherewith he loved us, even when we were dead in
sins, hath made us alive, quickened us together with Christ, because
we're saved by grace." And that's what happened to Matthew. Given
to Christ to save, the Lord Jesus Christ laying down his life,
and now the Lord Jesus coming to him and calling him, follow
me. And he rises and comes to the
Lord. So, you see in this how that
Christ saved a sinner, don't you? And there's one place that
I really especially like, and it's found in Luke chapter 18.
Look at Luke chapter 18. The same thing is there. Another
publican in Luke 18 was called. It didn't call the same way as
Matthew, but it was a call. Nonetheless, the kind of call
that we all need. And Matthew, I'm sorry, Luke
chapter 18. And it says in verse 9, Jesus
spake a parable unto a certain people which trusted in themselves
that they were righteous and despised others. He said two
men went up into the temple to pray. The one a Pharisee and
the other a publican. In those days people understood
what a Pharisee was. As soon as you said Pharisee,
they had a picture, an image in their mind. Here's a person
who does everything right. They go to church. They keep
the commandments. They give their money. When you
look at them, there's just nothing you can find wrong with them.
Everything God requires, they're able to do it. And I see that
in people. How could they be so good? They
just do everything right. I would like to be like that.
Wouldn't you? But I can't. It's frustrating. Every time
I try, it seems like just a total failure. And then Jesus says,
This Pharisee and this publican went up to the temple to pray,
and the Pharisee stood, and he prayed thus with himself, God,
I thank Thee. See how he prays? I thank Thee. That was a good prayer, wasn't
it? But he says, I thank Thee that I'm not as other men, extortioners,
unjust, adulterers, or even as this publican. But here we see
something greatly flawed in this man. He was a Pharisee. Outwardly,
he looked good. But inside of him, he did not
think he was a sinner. He did not think he needed mercy
from God. And if he didn't think he needed
mercy from God, what did he need God for? Well, I thank you I'm
not like other men are. And what he was saying there,
he was really a good man. A really good man. He didn't
extort. He wasn't unjust. An extortioner, that's what a
publican would be. He didn't commit adultery. At
least not in his body. Maybe in his mind. He wasn't
all these things that the publican was. And he looked down at the
publican. He says, I even fast twice in the week. I give tithes
of all I possess. While he's praying, Jesus says,
the publican, standing afar off... Not just standing, but with his
head lowered. He would not lift up so much
as his eyes to heaven. But he smote on his breast, saying,
God, be merciful to me, a sinner." And the word mercy there means
the mercy seat. Where God told Moses to have
the priest sprinkle the blood once in a year. And God would
look at the blood. on the mercy seat, and he would
receive the people without their sin because of the blood. And
so the publican prays, he says, God, and he smites his breast,
he says, God, be merciful to me, a sinner. In fact, it says
THE sinner in the original. Be merciful to me, THE sinner. The only one he thought was a
sinner in the room was him. And the Pharisee's standing there,
I'm glad I'm not like him. The publican's like, God be merciful
to me, a sinner, beating on his breast. Look at the mercy seat. Receive the blood. Receive me
because you've looked at the blood and satisfied your justice
in that. And Jesus says in verse 14, I
tell you, this man, the sinner, Went down to his house justified. God said about this man, he's
righteous in my eyes. Righteous. No sin. Perfectly
whole. Completely healed of all of his
sin. I've taken his sins and I've
laid them on the mercy seat and sprinkled the blood there. That's
what he's saying. And so we see that here in Matthew
chapter 9. We see that God is merciful to
sinners, and that's what mercy means. I can't be saved unless
I'm a sinner. And a sinner, we're all sinners.
The problem isn't that we're not sinners. I mean, don't go
out and say, well, I'm not a sinner. I can't be saved. I'm going to
go kill somebody so I can be a sinner and be saved. That's
not what He's talking about. He's talking about knowing that
you're a sinner. Before God, God has brought upon
you the weight of your sin, and it lays there in your conscience,
and it afflicts you, and you see it, it infects everything
you do. And so you cry out to Him. So we're to know this, we're
to learn this is the first thing. And never forget it. Never forget
that God is merciful to sinners. If Christ came into the world
to save sinners, what does that mean? It means that it's the
most important thing In all the world, that God to show mercy
to sinners is the most important thing in all the world. That
God would show mercy to sinners. Think about that. Someone offends
you. They treat you badly. And you have a just cause against
them for what they've done to you. That's what we've done to
God. We have offended Him. And He
has a just reason to bring punishment on us. And yet He's laid aside
His wrath against us. His just wrath against us. And
He's buried His wrath in His Son. And taken from Him full
satisfaction to His justice against us. And then He's merciful to
sinners. It's the glory of God to show
mercy to sinners. God considers His mercy to sinners
as His highest quality, His highest glory, His highest honor. And
God being merciful to sinners is the reason why sinners praise
God. Who is going to praise God from
their heart but a sinner who's found mercy from God? Only sinners
truly praise the Lord Jesus Christ because that's why He came. Unless
I'm a sinner, not only will I not be saved, but I will not be thankful. I will not come to God. I will
not give praise to God. I will find no interest in Christ.
Why are people not interested in the Lord Jesus Christ? Why do I find my heart cold so
much of the time? Why do I find myself so uninterested? And the Lord has to break me
down. because I'm not a sinner. I don't
see my need of Christ, and so I don't come to Him. In fact,
when we were back at Luke, I didn't read this first, but let me emphasize
it with you. Back in Luke chapter 18, he says
in verse 14, I tell you, this man went down to his house justified
rather than the other, for everyone that exalts himself shall be
abased." That's what the Pharisee did. He stood, raising his head,
lifting his eyes to heaven, God I thank you, I'm not like other
men are, even as this publican. He's an exaggeration almost,
in order to make the point. But this is what we are in our
heart. We exaggerate our good qualities, thinking that somehow,
some way, we can make ourselves pleasing to God. When we think
we need to be right with God, we immediately start thinking
of what we're going to do to get right with God. Don't we?
That's a Pharisee. The only one who can be saved
is someone who comes like the publican. Empty handed. Without
a penny to pay. No profit for God. Looking upon
me. Nothing to bring. Nothing He
can say. Well, I can see that you're an intelligent man. And
if I save you, you're going to bless so many people with your
intelligence. Baloney. God doesn't need us. And if God saves us, he'll save
us in spite of ourselves. God finds no value in us to save
us. He finds reason in himself. That's
what the psalmist prays. Lord, for thy name's sake, pardon
mine iniquity, for it is great. So back to Matthew chapter 9.
He says in verse 14, when the disciples of John came to him
saying, Why do we and the Pharisees fast often, but thy disciples
fast not? And Jesus said to them, Can the
children of the bride chamber mourn as long as the bridegroom
is with them? But the days will come when the
bridegroom shall be taken from them, and then shall they fast.
And then he goes on and talks about the new and the old. But
let's pause here in verse 14 and 15. is the people of God. The bride
is the woman in the marriage. The bridegroom is the man. And
the Lord Jesus Christ, when the disciples of John and the Pharisees
are fasting, they're mourning, they're afflicting themselves,
because that's what fasting was. Depriving yourselves of necessary
entitlements, food for your body, in order to make yourself low
before God, afflicting your souls. And Jesus says, there's no need.
There's no need for my disciples to fast. I'm with them. I'm with
them. The bridegroom is with the bride.
Why would the bride be unhappy when her bridegroom is with her?
That would be an insult. And in the Jewish marriages,
unlike ours today, the bride is the most greatly adorned,
and that's the one that everybody waits for, and she comes out,
and the whole thing all centers around the bride. But in the
Jewish marriages, everything's centered around the bridegroom.
Because the bridegroom was the one who took all of the obligations
of his newly wedded wife. He took all of the obligations
and he committed himself to give himself, whatever it took, for
her. Give himself to her. Bring her
into union with himself. And the two of them together
bearing fruit to God. It was because of the bridegroom.
That's where the importance was. And so he says, the bride can't
mourn when the bridegroom is with them. Someday, when I'm
taking from them, then they will mourn. And that's what happened
when Jesus was taken from the disciples before the Spirit of
God was poured out. But now look at verse 16. No
man puts a piece of new cloth into an old garment, for that
which is put in to fill it up takes from the garment, and the
rent is made worse. We don't do patches anymore,
but when I was a kid, I did. My mom taught me how to sew,
and if I had a pair of pants with a hole in the knee, I'd
take a piece of new cloth, and I would sew it around the patch,
and now I didn't have, you know, I didn't fall down and skin my
knee. But Jesus says that's not what you do. If you put a new
piece of cloth on an old garment, then the new is strong, and it
rips the old. And then he gives another comparison.
He says, Not only that, but men don't put new wine into old wine
flasks, bottles, else the bottles break. Because the wine flask
was made to expand as the wine would emit the gases, part of
the fermentation process. And if you put the new wine into
old bottles, these things have already been stretched to the
max and they're going to break. So he says you take new wine
and you put it in new bottles. And what is he saying here? Remember
the context. Christ Jesus came into the world
to save sinners. You don't take the grace of God
and put it in the heart of a faithless soul who doesn't look to Christ
alone. Because if you do, that man who
has no eye for Christ, he doesn't look to Christ, he doesn't come
to Christ, he doesn't lay everything on Him for His salvation, He's
going to attribute. He's going to care very little
for the gospel. You see, grace means that God,
unlike the law, the law says everything God requires of you,
you must provide. You personally. And if you don't
personally meet what God has said, the law condemns you to
death. And you personally are going
to die. But grace says, everything God requires from you, God has
provided in His Son. That's what grace is. Grace lays all the conditions
of every promise on God Himself to fulfill. Grace does for us
what we cannot do in the Lord Jesus Christ. We need everything
from God. You see, grace brings a sinner. in all the nakedness of his need,
and finds a one-to-one correspondence between his need and what he
finds in Christ. So that the reason Christ came
from glory is exactly what this sinner needs. He has sins. He needs his sins removed. He
sees the Lord Jesus Christ. It's through the Lord Jesus Christ,
God says, His name is Jesus. He shall save his people from
their sins. The sinner needs obedience. He
needs everything God requires, but he can't fulfill it. The
Lord Jesus Christ came and He obeyed the law. He fulfilled
the law. By one man's obedience, many shall be made righteous.
He was made sin that we might be made the righteousness of
God in Him. The sinner needs faith, and it's Christ who is
the author and finisher of faith, and He finds everything he needs
in the Lord Jesus Christ. Everything you need. The Lord
Jesus Christ, when He was raised from the grave, went to heaven
and sat on heaven's throne in order that He might give repentance
and faith, the forgiveness of sins, to His people. That's what
it says in Acts 5.31. He was exalted to the right hand
of God to give repentance and the forgiveness of sins. And
so when we come to Christ, we find in Him the reason for which
He came as fulfilling our need. And that's why you can't put
new wine into old bottles. God has to prepare the ground. He has to prepare our souls.
He has to give us spiritual life. So that we have this faith that
sees, yes, I'm a sinner and I have nothing. And then we see, ah,
but the Lord Jesus Christ is everything that I need from God.
God has given him. And that's the new wine. Christ
and what God has done in him for us and our hearts have to
be made new in order to receive that. We have to be turned from
the way we previously thought. We thought God saved us because
of what he found in us. Or what we would bring someday.
But God doesn't save that way. He saves for Christ's sake alone.
And so in verse 18, then we see this man whose daughter is sick.
His name is Jairus. Verse 18 of Matthew 9, it says,
While Jesus spake these things to them, behold, there came a
certain ruler and worshipped him, saying, My daughter is now
dead. And I have to understand by what
he says here, he means, my daughter is very near death, as if she
was dead. Because in Mark and Luke, he
says, my daughter is dying. and near death. But it says,
My daughter is even now dead, but come and lay thy hand upon
her and she shall live. Now again, here we have an example,
an illustration. The Lord is going to take a case
and He's going to lay it on the table before us to the eyes of
our faith. He's going to show us how He
shows mercy to sinners. And here's a man who comes to
the Lord and he has what I can only call great faith. What do
you mean? He has this huge conviction that
the Lord Jesus Christ can actually raise his 12 year old daughter
from the dead. Bring her to life. Even if she
dies. Actually she hasn't died just
yet. But he's going to. She's going to die. And he's
going to raise her. But this man, Jairus, he believes
that Christ can do this. A man with great faith. And we
look at that and we think, that's not me. That's not me. I couldn't
have believed that. But then he goes on. It says,
Come and lay your hand upon her and she shall live. And Jesus
arose and followed him and so did his disciples. There is the
mercy of God, isn't it? The Lord Jesus Christ following
a man. to go heal his daughter. Can
you imagine that? The great physician, all these
people crowding around him. Who knows how many hundreds,
maybe thousands there. One time he fed 5,000 men with
all the women and children. Another time there were 4,000
or 7,000, I can't remember. There was thousands of people
would come to hear him. And now Jesus is following this
one man to his house. But while he's going, in verse
20, behold, behold, a woman which was diseased with an issue of
blood, 12 years came behind him and touched the hem of his garment.
For she said within herself, if I may but touch his garment,
I shall be whole. What is this? Here's Jesus with
his disciples and a crowd of people walking, following Jairus
to his house to heal his daughter. And this woman, the crowd is
pressing on him. There's no room to squeeze in.
And this woman sneaks up behind him. And she has an issue. We
think of it as an issue. She has a problem. She did have
a problem. But when the Bible says an issue, it means she had
some kind of something that ran from her body. And it never stopped. For 12 years, her body was always
emitting this flow. And she couldn't stop it. In
fact, it says in the book of Mark, the same account, that
she had tried. She had gone to many physicians,
many doctors. And she had tried everything
they said to do. And even spent all of her money.
And it only left her worse. She was no better at all. She
was only worse. Can you imagine? The problem
was that she had something that, in the Old Testament, declared
her to be unclean. Before the law, she was unclean. Now, her problem was an issue
of running her body. Basically, she never stopped
her menstrual cycle. Every month, a woman, in the
eyes of the law, became unclean. And seven days after their flow
stopped, they could wash, they could offer two turtle doves
for their sacrifice, and they would be clean before the law.
But this woman, she never stopped. It just kept flowing for 12 years. And it was a shameful thing.
Not only was she unclean before the law, but it was a shameful
thing. And in those days they would use rags or whatever they
could to stop the flow and to clean it up. And it was just
something that was constantly with her. And she was no doubt
hiding from everybody. Ashamed. And so she comes up
behind Jesus. No one knows her problem but
her. And no one knows that she's there to touch him, except her.
No one even knows that she believes, except her. She doesn't even
think about the fact that she has faith. She's not even considering
her faith. She's only looking at Jesus.
And she's only saying, if I can but just touch the hem, just
the edge of his clothes, I will be whole. Why did she believe
that? Well, because Jesus had healed
many other people. Other people had been healed.
And she thought in her heart, I can be healed. Remember the
context? Jesus came into the world to
save sinners. Before the law, she was unclean.
She was plagued, Jesus said in another place. She was healed
of her plague. It was a plague to her. Unclean,
plagued, afflicted, wasted all of her money. She teaches us
much about how God saves sinners. Think about what she did. She
realized that before God she was unclean. And she tried to
fix the problem. She went to physicians, doctors. That compares to us going to
religious quacks. Who think they're doctors. Who
think that they know the truth. And they give us things to do.
And they actually cause us, it says in Mark's version, it says,
she suffered many things by many physicians. She suffered. She
did what they said and it made her only worse. And the worst
thing is, is she had to pay money. She gave all that she had in
order to try to fix her problem, her uncleanness before God. That's
what we do naturally. We see our problem and the first
thing we think is, how can I fix this? And we go about to do what
we think God would want us to do. How can I be a Christian?
I remember in my life thinking, I see other people They sing. They're happy. They seem like
everything's well. I want to be a Christian. What
am I supposed to do? I've got to dedicate my life.
I've got to read my Bible. I've got to pray. I've got to
get busy. I've got to give money. I've got to do all these things.
And so I started to do that. Just like this woman, I suffered
many things by many doctors. And I was none better, but only
worse." But hear what happened. She comes to Jesus, and she touches
His garment, and as soon as she did, she knew that in herself,
The flow from her body immediately stopped. Now this flow indicated
that her normal cycle wasn't blessed by God to produce life.
She just continued to have this endless flow that indicated not
only her uncleanness, but her lack of blessing of life. She
couldn't produce life in herself. And her body was a constant reminder,
look at this, I'm unclean. Nothing but death results from
all that I do. That's what she's teaching us.
A sinner. Before God, unclean, plagued,
miserable, suffering many things, trying to do what religion would
tell her to do, and nothing better. But she touches Jesus. Now, what
are these garments? Did the garments of Jesus have
some kind of a magic, crystal-y, sparkly thing that made her well?
No. The garments in scripture represent,
are the clothing of the Lord Jesus Christ. Look at Isaiah,
I mean Revelation chapter 19. What garments does Christ wear? And why are they important? Why
is her touching them? What does this mean to touch
these garments and to make her well? Look at Revelation 19.
It says, In verse 7, "...let us be glad
and rejoice and give honor to Him, the Lamb of God..." That's
the Lord Jesus Christ. "...for the marriage of the Lamb
is come, and His wife hath made herself ready." We know who the
wife of the Lamb is, don't we? It's His people. And to her,
to the people of God, the ones Christ saved, to her was granted
that she should be arrayed in fine linen, clothed with fine
linen, clean and white. For the fine linen is the righteousness
of the saints." What is the wife of the Lamb clothed with? Righteousness. And where does she get it? Well,
it says it's the righteousness of the saints. But look at Isaiah.
Chapter 61, in Isaiah 61, it teaches us what this is, this
clothing. He says in Isaiah 61, verse 10,
I will greatly rejoice in the Lord. My soul shall be joyful
in my God. He hath clothed me with the garments
of salvation. He hath covered me with the robe
of righteousness. As a bridegroom decketh himself
with ornaments, and as a bride adorneth herself with her jewels.
Just like in Revelation, the saints were clothed in the righteousness. And here it says that God, her
Savior, has clothed her in the garments of salvation and a robe
of righteousness. Now look over at Isaiah 66. Just
a couple pages over in your Bible. Isaiah 66. Look at this verse. In verse 64, verse 6. He says, But we are all as an unclean
thing. And the word unclean there means
menstruous claws. We're all like a menstruous cloth. All of our righteousnesses are
as filthy rags." That's the word that actually means menstruous
claws. We are unclean and all of our righteousnesses are as
filthy rags. And we all do fade as a leaf
and our iniquities like the wind have taken us away. So now we
can see what this means here when this woman touched the Lord
Jesus Christ. Think with me now, with what
the Bible is saying this is. The woman is unclean. In herself,
she is just full of this flow, this menstruous flow. And she's
unclean before God, and before the law of God. She can't do
anything to make herself clean. But she touches Christ's garments,
the robe that Christ wears. And in touching Him, she is made
perfectly whole. To be perfectly whole in the
eyes of the law means you're clean. Now, she had this flow
from her body. But our body is nothing but sin. Paul says in Romans chapter 7,
I know that in me, that is in my flesh dwelleth no good thing. No good thing. That's what it
means to be clean. She looked at herself, there's
nothing good. But when she touched Christ, all the virtue that He
was, came to her and cleansed her from her uncleanness. In
other words, according to scripture, we are made righteous before
God because of His righteousness. 2 Corinthians 5.21, God hath
made him to be sin for us, that we might be made the righteousness
of God in him. You see, we don't have any obedience
before God and we can't produce obedience God can accept. But
Christ has perfect obedience and His obedience is counted
ours because God gives it to us as a gift. Romans 5.17 Righteousness
is given to us. And so when she touched Jesus'
garments, it is teaching that in believing The Lord Jesus Christ,
His blood, and His righteousness is all my cleanness, all my acceptance
and righteousness before God. She had what she believed about
Christ. And so Jesus says to her, He
says, when she touched His garment, Jesus turned about. And in the
other accounts, He turned about and He looked around and He says,
Who touched me? And she was hiding at that point. So that the disciples
said, I don't know. What do you mean, who touched
you? The crowd is all around you. And Jesus said, somebody
touched me. Because virtue has gone out of
me. And so this woman, imagine her
now 12 years hiding from people, spending all, completely empty
in herself, and yet she knows in herself that in touching Christ
she was perfectly whole. She comes, and it says in Mark's
account, she came trembling and fearful. This woman had faith,
but would you say her faith was strong? No. Her faith was very
small in herself, but she believed just like Jairus what everyone
must believe. That all of my virtue is in Christ. Everything I need to come to
God, He will find in His Son. That's what she believed. If
I can but touch His garments. If I can have His righteousness
credited to my account. In Revelation 19.13 it says His
vesture was dipped in blood. His clothes were dipped in blood.
Meaning that he suffered under the wrath of God for our sins.
And because he did that, our sins are taken away. Therefore,
his robe is our robe of righteousness. God covers us with his robe. He makes us clean because Christ
suffered for us. And when we see that, and we're
convinced of it, and we come to God only on the basis of what
he has done, it's just like this woman touching his robe. And
so she comes forward. And even though she thought she
could just take virtue from him. And that he wouldn't know it. And that nobody else would know
it. And she could just go away. Jesus is not going to let this
go. No, I need to know who touched me. You come out. She comes out. She tells everybody. And she
told Jesus. She falls at his feet. And she
says, this is what happened. For 12 years I've been in this
condition. 12 years I've been unclean. I've
gone to many physicians, suffered many things, spent all that I
had. And I knew, when I saw you in the crowd, I knew that if
I could just touch your clothes, I would be clean. Perfectly whole.
She said, I snuck up behind you and I touched your clothes. And
listen to what Jesus said. He says, in verse 22 but Jesus
turned him about and when he saw her he said daughter be of
good comfort thy faith hath made thee whole and the woman was
made whole from that hour right then she was made whole as soon
as we look to Christ as everything God credits everything that he's
done to us in our conscience. Our heart is sprinkled with the
blood of Christ. We have perfect rest and peace
knowing that God accepts us for what Christ has done. That's
what faith does. It brings to our conscience and
to our souls all that Christ has done. He came to save sinners
and faith sees why he came and faith draws that from him, from
his word and lays hold on it. And so that's what happened here.
And then it goes on and Jesus went on. You can imagine what
Jairus is doing at this point. Man, I wish you would hurry up.
Man, my daughter, she's dying. If you could just scoot along
a little faster. But Jesus takes his time. He's
talking to the woman. The whole thing, who knows how
long it took. Maybe an hour? Maybe 10 minutes? I don't know.
But whatever it was, if I was Jairus, I would be crawling out
of my skin. I'd be, let's go! So, he says, when Jesus came to the
ruler's house, it says actually in the other account that the
servants came. In fact, look at Mark's account,
I think it is. Look at Mark chapter 5. See what
happened here. There's a little more drama.
Mark chapter 5. And I'll pick it up. We'll go
ahead and read verse 32. Jesus looked around about to
see her that had done this thing. And the woman, fearing and trembling,
knowing what was done in her, came and fell down before him
and told him all the truth. And he said to her, Daughter,
thy faith hath made thee whole, go in peace, and be whole of
thy plague. While he yet spake, there came
from the ruler of the synagogue's house certain which said, to
the ruler and to Jesus, because he heard what they said, he said,
the messenger said to the ruler, thy daughter is dead. Why troublest
thou the master any further? Every bit of human hope right
then was taken away. There was no reason for him to
proceed any further based on what he could possibly see with
his eyes. In fact, this was what I call
a word against faith. We get faith by hearing God's
word, but here's a word that's discouraging, isn't it? Don't
go any further. There's no reason to proceed.
She's dead. But the Lord Jesus Christ comes
and supports him in his faith, doesn't he? Listen to what he
says. As soon as Jesus heard the word that was spoken, he
said to the ruler of the synagogue, be not afraid, only believe. Only believe. And so we know
what happens next. So he didn't allow anyone to
follow them, except Peter, James, and John, the brother of James.
And he comes to the house of the ruler of the synagogue, and
he saw the tumult, and them that wept and wailed greatly." They
were making this big, huge to-do over it. And when he was come
in, he said to them, "'Why make you this ado?' And weep. The damsel is not dead, but sleepeth.'
They laughed him to scorn. But when he had put them all
out, he takes the father and the mother of the damsel and
them that were with him, Peter, James, and John, and he entered
in where the damsel was lying. Imagine this. Have you ever seen
someone dead? It's quite a shock to see a person who's dead. It's
like taking the glove off your hand and looking at the glove
with no hand in it. Their eyes There's nothing there. Their body, there's no breath,
there's no movement, there's no color left. They're changed. It's like just the shell of the
person. And so he walks in and his daughter
is dead, no doubt. No color in her face, no movement
in her eyes, no breath. And he takes her hand. And he
says to her in the language there is, Talitha Kumai, made Isaiah
unto thee arise. And she gets up. Just like that. Just like that. Only belief. You see, look at Romans chapter
eight. One verse there. Romans chapter
eight. And then I'll let you go. One
verse. This is amazing. This is the
mercy of God, isn't it? That He would raise from the
dead. When we were dead in sins, because of His great love we're
with, He loved us. He quickened us. He made us alive
together with Christ. That's what it says in Ephesians
2.4. But look here. It says in Romans 8. If Christ
be in you, the body is dead because of sin. Romans 8.10, but the
Spirit is life because of righteousness. Why is the Spirit life? Because
of righteousness. See that? And what about our
body? Everything about us, it's dead. Why? Because of sin. This body
is dead. It's going to drop into the grave.
It's going to go away. It's not going to go away. It's
going to be lying in the grave until God raises it from the
dead. But right now, in our house of
our body, our body is dead because of sin. That's why Paul said
in Romans 7, I know that in me, in my flesh dwelleth no good
thing. But the Spirit, in our spirit, God has given us life
because of the righteousness of Christ. Talitha Kume, I say
unto thee, made arise. God speaks to us in the Gospel. He points us to Christ. He came
to save sinners. This woman, touching His garment,
His righteousness imputed, credited to her. His obedience, not hers. His blood, not her sin. and His
power to raise from the dead because of His righteousness.
This is why Jesus came into the world. This is the glory of God.
And this is why I find such great comfort. When I see myself, I
see nothing but hopelessness. But when I see Christ, I see
nothing but hope. Let's pray. Father, thank you
that in the Lord Jesus Christ we have life, eternal life, because
of His everlasting righteousness. We can produce nothing but sin,
but He obeyed the law in everything. He satisfied justice, and He
sits in glory. having justified His people by
His own blood. We thank You, Lord, for this
Savior, our Lord Jesus Christ. We look to Him. We have nowhere
else to look. And we see in ourselves that
we have a great need for all that He is. We pray, Lord, receive
us for His sake, for Your namesake, Lord. Pardon our iniquity. It
is truly great. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.