Well, good morning. If you care
to open your Bibles to Matthew chapter 9, continue our study
of the book of Matthew this morning. Matthew chapter 9. Before we
begin, let's bow together in prayer. Our Heavenly Father, how thankful
we are to come into your courts this morning in the name, the
person of our Lord Jesus Christ. We come before you with praise
and thanksgiving. Praise you for who you are, your
holiness, righteousness, your mercy and your grace, your love,
your wisdom to provide a savior who saves his people from all
of their sins. And Father, we thank you. We
thank you for your mercy and your grace. We thank you for
your provision, your spiritual provision that you've given us
everything. that we need and your physical
provision, how you blessed us. Father, we're thankful. Father, I pray this morning that
you give us a spirit of worship, that you would enable us to,
by your spirit, to hear and see our Lord Jesus Christ and to
lay hold on him by faith. But we pray for ourselves, we
pray for our children's classes, we pray for Your people everywhere
who meet together to worship. Father, bless your word. Get
glory to your name, we pray. Fathers, we get close to the
end of this year. We thank you. We thank you for
the blessings of this year. And we pray that you'd go with
us into this new year, this new decade, Father, that you'd continue
to bless, bless your people and bless your word. Go with us,
we pray. All these things we ask and we
give thanks in that name, which is above every name, the name
of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen. All right, Matthew chapter
nine, I've titled our lesson this morning, Our Disease and
His Virtue. You begin to compare our disease
and his virtue. You can't find two greater opposites
than the holy God and sinful man. But if sinful man would
be saved, those two must meet. Somehow God in his holiness must
meet man in his sinfulness if a sinner is ever to be saved.
And our text gives us an example of that this morning. We begin
in verse 18, Matthew chapter nine. While he spake these things
unto them, behold, there came a certain ruler and worshiped
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 we know from Mark and Luke's
account that the ruler here is Jairus. And his daughter, in
Mark and Luke, he calls her my little daughter. I can't imagine
the sorrow and the desperation that Jairus is feeling at this
time. He says here his little daughter
is dead. Mark says that she was at the
point of death. And before the Lord got there,
someone did come and tell them, no need in the master coming
to the house, your daughter is dead. Maybe Jairus was afraid
she was already dead. And you just can't, you parents,
you know how broken hearted he was. You can't imagine how desperate
he was to have his precious little daughter healed. But he knew
that the Lord could heal her. That's why he came to her. He
knew the Lord could heal her. He knew the Lord could even raise
her from the dead. And he came to the Lord because he was desperate. He was so desperate. You know,
when she was first sick and she began, you know, getting a little
worse and, you know, but they thought, hey, maybe she'll get
better. He didn't come to the Lord then, did he? He came to
the Lord when all hope was gone and he was desperate. And can
you imagine how thrilled he was when immediately, but here the
Lord's teaching, he's with these people. And immediately the Lord
said, I'll go with you. How thrilled he was, his little
daughter's going to be healed. And while they're on their way
to his house, they meet a woman. And we're going to spend the
rest of our time this morning looking at our Lord's interaction with
this woman. And then we'll come back next week, Lord willing,
and finish looking at the Lord's interaction with Jairus. But
these two are intertwined. It's not an accident that the
Lord is with Jairus going to his house, and this woman comes
uninvited, an uninvited guest, and interrupts them. Here she
comes, verse 20. And 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. Now, remember
I told you if a sinner would be saved, the Holy God and the
diseased sinner, they must come together. They must meet. Well,
what is it that brought the Holy God and the diseased sinner?
What brought them together to meet here? Several things. Number
one, it was her misery. Her misery brought her to the
Lord, didn't it? This woman was having her time of the month
for 12 years without stop. She was enduring a monthly curse
of sin for 12 years. I mean, can you imagine? Can
you imagine the unrelenting pain and cramping? She was, at this
point, she had to be an emotional wreck. And not only was she in
physical pain, her emotions just all messed up. She had to be
so weak from anemia, wouldn't you think? I mean, they didn't
have blood transfusions and things like that at that time. And we'll
see in a minute how, during these 12 years, she'd undergone so
many treatments. And all those treatments from
those doctors were were tortures. They're just tortures. They didn't
help her. They didn't heal her. They just made her worse. And
the law forbid a woman in her condition to even be out in public. I mean, her coming to the Lord
like this is a violation of God's law. She was unclean and anything
she touched would become unclean. If she touched something and
somebody else touched it, they would become unclean. She couldn't
go out. The law forbid her to go out
in public. And normally this would last, you know, a few days
a month and it would be over. This had been going on for 12
years. And if she had at all been trying to obey the law,
she was miserably lonely. She hadn't gone out to see people. And in her utter misery, she
came to Christ. It was her misery that brought
her to the Savior, to seek help. And that's you and me, a sinner
will never come to Christ. You might hear of him. You might
hear of his power. You might hear of his mercy.
You might hear of his grace. You might hear how he forgives
sin, but you'll not come to him until you're miserable. And when
I say miserable, I don't mean that we're just sad about our
circumstances. We're sad about our earthly circumstances
and we're sad about the consequences of sin. The miserable I'm talking
about is we're miserable because of who we are. Not just what
we've done, not the consequences of what we've done, but we're
miserable because of the sin that we are. See, sin is not
just something that we've done wrong. I shouldn't have done
that. Sin is our nature. Sin is who we are. Sin's in the
blood. See, this issue of blood is a
picture of the sin that we are. Sin is in our blood. It's our
nature. And when who we are makes us
miserable, Then and only then will we come to Christ. And if
you think, well, you know, I mean, yeah, I mean, I sin. I'm not
perfect. I'm not that bad. If that's what
you think, as long as you think that, you'll never come to Christ.
But when who you are makes you miserable, then you'll come to
Christ. Then the miserable disease sinner
is going to come in contact with God the Savior. All right, number
two. Turn to Mark chapter 5. Here's
Mark's account of this. Mark gives us some more information
here. Here's the second thing. Man's
failure brought her to the Lord. Her failure and everybody else's
failure. You know, this woman's personal failure brought her
to the Lord. It was her sin, her personal
sin that caused this disease in her body. So it was her failure
that brought her to Christ. But also the failure of everybody
else brought her to Christ. Look here at Mark 5 verse 25.
And a certain woman, which had an issue of blood 12 years, and
had suffered many things, of many physicians, and had spent
all that she had and was nothing bettered, but rather grew worse. Now, this woman went to every
doctor she could find, and nobody could help her. As a matter of
fact, every doctor she went to, not only did they not help her,
they made her worse. And you know how it went. You
know, her neighbor told her, you know, my sister-in-law's
neighbor's aunt, she had the same problem that you got, and
she went to Dr. So-and-so, and he fixed her right
up. Buddy, this poor woman went and immediately she made an appointment
to see this doctor. She went and he just made her
worse. And here's the picture. I mean, you know, you wonder,
what does this have to do with me? Let me tell you. Here's the
picture. Spiritually, we start to get
some sense of our sin. We start to get some sense of
our sin sickness. And we immediately go looking
for the doctors of religion that we think can make us, help us,
make us feel better. First thing we do is we go to
old Doc Freewill. But old Doc Freewill can't help
us. He just makes us worse because our will is to sin. Our will
is to go away from God. So old Doc Freewill, he can't
help us. And then we try old Doc Law. He's the oldest doctor
in town, old Doc Law. But we go to him, he just makes
us worse. Old Doc Law, all he can do is point out our sin.
He can never tell us of a cure. Now you all, you work with people
like that, haven't you? They know everything everybody's
doing wrong and they never have one idea how to make anything
better. That's Doc Law. He can't help us. This just makes logical sense
to the human mind. I got a sin sickness. I'm going
to go to a doc healing and doc speaking in tongues. And we find
out he's just a quack. He's just selling snake oil.
Nothing there to help. And then we hear, well, there's
a new doctor in town. He's a doctor of church membership. And he's
got a partner, doctor of denomination. Let's go to him. And we go to
them. They take a real good look at
us. And they send us to doctor of baptism and doctor of ceremony
and doctor of ritual. In all their soothing words,
their candlelit ceremonies, their washings, their ointments, none
of it can reach the burning pain and misery of our sin. It's just
a skin deep cure. They try to cloak the sin that's
there, but they can't reach the disease of it and just makes
us worse. You see that the problem with
man's religion is all it ever tries to do is treat the symptoms. They tell you just quit sinning
and God will save you. Quit sinning and God will be
happy with you. They're just treating the symptoms. Man's religion
can't treat the disease because they don't know what the disease
is. The disease is not outward. It's in the blood. It's in the
heart. It's in the nature. And while they spend all their
time talking about the outward manifestations of the disease,
the outward symptoms, the disease keeps getting worse. It just
keeps breaking out worse everywhere. The more you try to contain it,
the worse it breaks out. I mean, they use the words righteousness
and salvation and forgiveness, but the further you follow them,
the further they take you away from God. That's exactly right. Maybe none of you, but somebody
listening to this recording is going to think, oh, Frank is
exaggerating that. Now, I mean, come on. They're
going to say it. Isn't religion good if it just
makes you a little nicer, if it cleans you up a little bit,
makes you more moral and, you know, a better neighbor, a better,
teaches you how to be merry, teach you how to get along with
others, you know? No, sir. No, sir. All that religion is
doing is making it worse. Am I exaggerating that? Matthew
chapter 23. You might want to mark your place
there, Mark 5. We'll come back, refer back to that several times.
Look at Matthew 23. Let's find out, am I exaggerating that?
What does God's word say? Matthew 23 verse 15. Woe unto you scribes and Pharisees,
hypocrites. Here our Lord is speaking to
Dr. Law, Dr. Freewill, Dr. Ceremony, Dr. Denomination. This is what he
says to them, woe unto you, you're hypocrites. For you compass sea
and land to make one proselyte, and when he's made, you make
him twofold more the child of hell than yourselves. No, these
doctors of religion aren't making anybody any better at all. They're
making them worse, twofold the child of hell that you are. See,
they can't help you. Only Christ can heal the disease
of sin. I told you this a number of times. Sin is not just something that
must be forgiven. Sin is a disease that must be
cured. It's got to be cleansed. And
only Christ can heal by giving a new nature, a new nature that
is righteous and will never sin, never get sick again. And when
we finally become helpless, when the Lord brings us to the end
of our rope and we see there's no hope, no hope in anything
I do, there's no hope in anything that man's religion can do for
me. Then and only then will we go to Christ. You see, it's our
failure. that draws us to Christ. The
failure of man's religion is the thing. The failure of it
is the only thing that draws people to Christ, who's the great
physician. And we become miserable failures.
Then we'll start to see Christ. That's what this woman did. All
right, thirdly, she's in misery and she's a failure. But you
know her misery and her failure. That's what makes her an object
of mercy. You know, the law said you can't
come to the temple. The law said you can't come to
the place of worship. The law said you can't go out
and be where people are. You can't go to the market. You can't
go where people gather. The law told her you stay out.
The law says you're unclean. You stay away. We don't need
your disease around here. The law pointed out her sin,
her disease. It constantly just kept saying,
look at your sin. Look at your disease. You're
unfit to be in God's presence. That's what the law says. But
then Christ came. Grace and truth came by the Lord
Jesus didn't they? And grace says come. Grace says
you come to Christ. It's your sin and your disease
that makes you fit. Now you come. You come as you
are in your filth, in your sin, in your disease. You come to
Christ. He's the savior of sinners. This
great physician is the savior of sinners. He heals the sick
from all their wounds and bruises and putrefying sores. You know,
that's what the Lord said. We looked at this just a few
weeks ago that he said, he said, they that behold need not a physician,
but they that are sick, they that are sick. And then he gave
us an example of that. He called Matthew, didn't he?
And he gives us two more examples, Jairus and the woman with the
issue of blood. These are the people who need
the Savior. Now, good religious people, they're
moral and they're upright. They're better than the prostitutes
and the drug dealers and those kinds of people Matthew hung
around with. They are just cut from a different
cloth. They're on a higher spiritual plane than the drinking, smoking,
cussing rednecks that we all know that most of us are. Those people who think they're
better than the rest of mankind, they're not objects. They're
not fit objects of God's mercy and God's grace because they
don't need it. They don't need mercy and grace. Just like a
person who's healthy doesn't need a doctor. Somebody has got
enough righteousness of their own. They don't need the great
physician. They don't need forgiveness. But miserable sinners who are
their failures, they cannot help themselves. They are candidates
to receive God's mercy and God's grace. Now you think about this
woman. I spent some time thinking about
her this week. If she could have chosen To be healthy or to be
sick, what would she have chosen? She chose to be healthy, wouldn't
she? I would, wouldn't you? She'd be healthy. But if she
were healthy, she never could have been healed by the Lord.
If she were healthy, she'd never have a reason to crawl in the
dust between people's feet to just touch the hand of this God.
If she were healthy. But if she's sick, she can be
healed. She can be healed by faith. You and I, if we could
choose To be righteous or be a sinner, which would you choose?
I'd choose righteous, wouldn't you? But if we were righteous
in ourselves, we could never experience the soul thrilling
rapture, being saved by God's grace, being given the righteousness
of another. You see, it's our sin and our
misery that make us fit objects of God's mercy and God's grace.
That's what draws us to Christ. We belong with him. If we're
guilty, if we're diseased. And here's another thing. This
is something that brought this poor woman to Christ. This shames me. The Lord is never too busy. Never,
ever, ever, ever too busy to help a poor sinner. Mark 5, verse
27. When she heard of Jesus, she
came in the press behind and she touched his garment. For
she said, if I, if I may, but touch his clothes, I shall be
whole. And straightway the fountain of her blood was dried up and
she felt in her body that she was healed of that plague. And
Jesus, immediately knowing in himself that virtue had gone
out of him, turned him about in the press and said, who touched
my clothes? And his disciples said unto him,
thou seest the multitude thronging thee. And sayest thou who touched
me? And he looked round about to see her that had done this
thing. But the woman, fearing and trembling, knowing what was
done in her, came and fell down before him and told him all the
truth. Now, remember what the Lord's
doing here. He's going with Jairus to Jairus's
house. And here's this delay. This uninvited
guest shows up. Can you imagine how Jairus felt? about this delay. The Lord stopped. Wait a minute, we don't have
time to stop. He stopped and looked around and asked who touched
me. Come on, we got to go. And then he stops and has a conversation
with this woman who's crawling around in the dust. We don't
have time for this. He may have been a real nice
guy, Jairus may have been, but he didn't much care about that
woman. He cared about his little daughter. Oh, she's precious
to him. Jairus was too busy to stop, wasn't he? I know this
woman's poor. I know she needs help. But now,
Lord, she's been putting up this for 12 years. My daughter's dying. Can you come back? He didn't
have time. This was an emergency. There's
no time to spare. But the Savior was not too busy,
wasn't he? He didn't need to be in a hurry.
He's in control. This thing not out of control.
He didn't need to be in a hurry. He never was. The Lord was never
in a hurry, was he? He was never in so much of a
hurry. He said, I must be about my father's business. I mean,
this is urgent. He must. This is the time. No
time to spare. He must save his people from
their sin. He must fulfill all the father's
will. but he was never in so much of
a hurry. He couldn't help a poor sinner.
One day, I should have looked this up, I don't know where he
was going, but he's going somewhere important, it must have been.
If the Lord's going somewhere, it's important. And he's going somewhere
important, and he stops and sees a funeral procession. You ever
drive down the road, you see a long line of cars going to
a funeral procession, going out to the cemetery? Think if you
could stop that whole procession and go over that casket and touch
the casket. or dead. There's a boy there who died,
the mother's only son. He raised him from the dead and
gave him back to her. He wanted too much for her, he'd
help that woman. There's another time the great physician was
strolling by the pool of Bethesda. There lay a man, impotent, he's
paralyzed. But the story goes that an angel
would come down, trouble those waters, and boy first went into
those waters, be healed of whatever disease they had. And those waters
were troubled. Everybody's too busy to help
that man, weren't they? Nope. Everybody's just too busy for
him. The great physician wasn't. He told him, take up your bed
and walk. He's never too busy. The Lord is the Lord of glory
who rules every event in the universe. I mean, from the path
of a piece of dust flying through the air. He rules it. He's directing
everything that happens in this creation all at once. That's
staggering to the natural mind, isn't it? Yet, with all that
going on, he's never too busy to stop to hear the cry of a
poor sinner crying for mercy. Never. There's no one more important
to the Savior than a sinner who's crying for mercy. The cry might
be weak and almost you think it can't be heard. He can hear
it. There's never so much going on.
There's never so many people crying to them that he can't
hear the cry of a poor sinner. And he is never too hard-hearted
to stop everything and to help. To cry a blind bard may have
stopped the Lord of glory in his tracks. then why haven't you cried for
mercy? Do you need mercy? Why haven't
you cried? Consider your character, your need for mercy. Consider
his character, how he freely gives it. Why haven't you cried?
Why don't you ask him to save your sin sick soul? This I can
promise you, you might think you're insignificant, and you're
more insignificant than you think you are, but you're not so insignificant
that the Lord won't stop. All right, here's the fifth thing.
Christ is exactly who this diseased woman needed. She came to Christ
because he is everything she needed. Mark 5 verse 30 says,
and Jesus, immediately knowing in himself that virtue had gone
out of him, turned him about in the press and said, who touched
my clothes? Now the Lord felt virtue go out of him. And that
word virtue means power. It's the power to perform miracles
but it also means moral power and excellency of soul. The Lord
Jesus was the opposite of this woman. She's diseased, he's health. She's dead, he's life. She's
powerless, he has all power. Everything this woman needed
when she touched the Lord went from him to her, everything she
needed. Now, how is that a picture of
salvation? Well, Christ is everything that
we need. We're unrighteous, he's righteous. We are our sin. He is holiness. We're dead. He's
life. He's everything that we need.
When Matthew quoted Isaiah chapter 53, he said Christ took our infirmities
and he bare our sicknesses. He took all of his people's sin
sickness and he took it into his own body upon the tree. And
when he was made sin for his people, he took our sin, our
sicknesses away from us and virtue went out of him. He's put into
his people righteousness and health and eternal life. That
is how we're made whole. See, God can forgive sin, but
something must be done with sin. It's got to go somewhere. It's
got to be punished somewhere. So Christ took it away from his,
from his people. He suffered and he died for it
so that his people could be healed so that virtue could go out of
him, into his people to give them everything that they need.
See, Christ is everything the sinner needs. He's everything.
He's made us wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption.
See, this poor woman, she came to the Lord. She'd heard of Jesus.
That's what Mark says. She'd heard of Him, and she came. You know what she found out?
She found out it's way better than what she heard. She'd say
like the Queen of Sheba, the half hadn't been told. I mean,
you fellows haven't scratched the surface. He's so much better
than anybody can say. He's everything that we need.
We are diseased. Christ is the healer. He heals
the sin of his people by taking it away from him. We are unclean. Christ is our righteousness.
Who makes his people clean? By his blood, we're sanctified. We're cut off from God. The law
says you can't come into God's presence. But in Christ Jesus,
we're made nigh unto God by his blood. Remember I told you, I've
been thinking about this. This woman was lonely. The law
said you can't go out in public. We're lonely, all alone. But
Christ is the friend of sinners. He is the friend, the brother,
the stick, the friend that's sticking closer than a brother.
He's everything we need. That's why we come to him in
it. All right, six, what brought this woman, what brings a diseased
sinner to the Holy God, to the Savior? It's faith. Our Lord turned around and saw
her, and He said, Your faith has made thee whole. Now we know
it's not her faith that made her whole. It wasn't faith in
Christ that healed her. It was Christ who healed her,
wasn't it? It's not faith that saves, Christ saves. But if we
would be saved, we must believe Christ. We've got to believe
Him. We must be given faith in Christ to believe Him if we would
be saved. It's Christ who saves, but we're
not going to be saved apart from faith in Christ. This woman believed. that Christ was all she needed.
And this crowd is just thronging. Many people touched the Lord.
Many people had touched him, but only one person touched him.
Many people touched him, but one person touched him in faith.
And what a change. Instantly, she was healed. She
believed that Christ is all she needed. That is saving faith. I've seen great big old thick
books written on faith, trying to describe faith and tell you
what faith is. And this is what faith is. Christ
is all I need. That's faith. And if you believe
that Christ is all you need, you'll do just what this woman
did. It was faith and she believed he would heal. All I got to do,
I don't even, he don't have to touch me. He don't have to do
anything. If I can just touch the hem of his garment. That's
what made her willing to crawl to Him in the dust. If I believe
Christ and you believe Christ, that'll make us willing to get
in the dust and crawl to Him. It was faith that made her know
her healing was in just a touch. Salvation is in a look. Look
and live. If you believe Christ, you'll
look. You'll look. All right, here's the last thing. This woman came to Christ because
she was a child of God all along. Look back here in our text, Matthew
chapter nine, verse 22, but Jesus turned him
about. And when he saw her, he said,
daughter, be of good comfort. Thy faith has made thee whole.
And the woman was made whole from that hour. Now I have thought
for years and years and years and years about this verse. This
is the only place in scripture where the Lord Jesus calls someone
daughter. Only place. And I have wondered
for years, why is that? Why is that? Well, I got a couple
of things. Maybe we'll answer the question. First, the Lord called her his
daughter because she is his daughter. She is. I call Savannah my daughter
because she is. She is my daughter. The reason
that the Holy Spirit drew this woman to Christ in the first
place, she was a child of God all along. And the spirit is
going to draw God's children to the Savior. He called her
his daughter because she is his daughter. This is the Lord's
daughter. He stopped everything. He stopped
everything he was doing to give her what she needed to help her.
because he loves her. That's his daughter. But here's
another thing, and maybe this will be helpful to you. I just
wonder if the Lord didn't call her daughter. There were other
people he helped, other women he helped that were his daughter,
but he called this woman, this poor woman, his daughter. Within earshot of Jairus. Jairus,
all he's thinking about It's his little daughter. The Lord called this woman and
he healed my daughter. Could be, could be, to give Jairus
some hope for his daughter. Could be, could be. Almighty God has some sons and
has some daughters. That gives me some hope for mine
and yours. Well, Lord willing, we'll use that as a springboard.
to go into next week and look at Jairus' little daughter. I
hope the Lord bless that too.