Mark chapter five. As I mentioned last week, this account by Mark and some
of the other writers is, there's two things going on here. He
was dealing first with this ruler of the synagogue, his name was
Jairus, and he came to him because his daughter was very, very ill. And then on the way to his home,
there was an incident that happened and this woman with the issue
of blood had touched him and was healed. So the accounts of
these things are kind of split. So if you want to read these
this afternoon, this is Mark 5, 22 and 24, records the beginning
of the story. And verses 35 through 43 give
us the ending of the story. Having restored the Gadarene
demoniac, our Lord now returns to the other side of the sea
where a multitude was gathered there to see him. He was a very
famous man. There's not many men in all the
history of humanity around which such things as our Lord had done
would follow after him. The raising of the dead, the
cleansing of lepers. There were a few prophets who
were able to do this. God enabled them or did these
things by them and through them. And they gained in reputation.
And so it is with our Lord only more so. And multitudes would
throng to see him, hoping to see a miracle, or some of them
hoping for a miracle. But at any rate, they gathered
there to hear him, so much so that he could hardly stand on
the land for the press. And one came to him who was a
ruler of the synagogue. Now I did some reading about
this because the way it's written, the first impression you get
from it is that they had a committee and he was one of the committee.
But that's just not so. There was only one ruler to each
synagogue. And this man was a ruler of one
of the synagogues. By all indications, he was a
member of the Sanhedrin, the High Council of Israel, or certainly
one step down from it, being appointed by them as a ruler
over the synagogue. And these synagogues were all
over Capernaum. That's where they were at, around
Capernaum. And this Jairus was a man of
great power. He was a man of great significance. He wasn't just a man that nobody
knew who walked up on the scene and nobody knew who he was. Everybody
knew who he was. And that's how come him to be
able to get through this press and get up to the Lord. They
just kind of moved out of the way for him. He was a very, very
important man. And he gained an audience with
the Lord Jesus. But he didn't come to the Lord
in the usual arrogance and pride of such a high-ranking Jew. He
was a high-ranking Jew. He was a man of much reputation
and power. But that's not the way he came
to the Lord, but rather he came bowing. And in Matthew's account,
it says he came and worshiped the Lord. Very unusual for a
high-ranking Jew. This man, no doubt, had seen
the Lord Jesus before, being a ruler of the synagogue, and
our Lord spoke in many of the synagogues in that area. And
he, no doubt, had heard Him speak and seen His miracles. And then
when the need become personal, he came to the Lord sincerely,
he came honestly, and he came believing. He didn't come demanding. Those who sincerely seek the
Lord do not come demanding their rights. When I was a little younger,
one of the big sayings of the religion of that day was, Claim
it. Just claim it. You can claim
this. Well, no, you don't have anything
you can claim except that you're a sinner. You can claim that.
Name it and claim it. That was the phrase of the day.
But this man didn't come demanding or claiming any rights or deserts. He just came with a desperate
petition. My daughter, he said, is now
dead. is the way Matthew records it.
In his mind and heart, his daughter was not dead as of yet when he
left to come to the Lord, but in his mind and heart, she was
dead. She was dying. She wasn't going to make it much
more. He went to seek the Lord. And so Matthew records it this
way. When he came, he just told the
Lord she's dead. She's dead. But he said, come
and lay thy hand upon her, and she shall live. Now in religion,
you see men pleading with sinners to do something for themselves.
That's what they say. You need to do this, and you
need to do that. And they plead with sinners to
do something for themselves, but here you see things as they
really are, one begging the Lord to do something for one that's
dying or dead and can't do anything for themselves. Now that's the
truth of the matter. That's how it is. When we come
to the Lord, we don't come thinking, well, I'm doing something. I
can do it. No, that's not the way it is. Not the way it is. The man of faith. How does faith
work? Well, if faith cannot bring the
sinner to Christ, he'll do all that he can to bring Jesus to
the sinner. That's what he'll do. If I can't
get one of my children to come to where I believe Christ is
and where he is proclaimed and where his spirit dwells, then
I'll try to do the other way. I'll try to get Christ to him
somehow, somehow. Well, how do you do that? Well,
you give him a track, you give him a CD. You visit with him, you talk
with him. And there's much I could say
here about the faith of Jairus, but I want instead to look at
something our Lord keeps pointing out and nobody seems to be listening. He keeps telling everybody concerned
that she was not dead, she's sleeping. Now that's the emphasis of this
story. She's not dead, she's sleeping. Therefore, I titled the lesson
this morning, A Sleeping Death. The Lord paused to deal with
the woman with the issue of blood and delayed somewhat his coming
to this dying girl's bed. And certain ones who had stayed
by her bedside now ran out to meet her father and tell him
and the Lord what he already knew in his heart, she was dead. My daughter is dead, why troublest
thou the Master any further? To which the Lord said, Be not
afraid, only believe. When it comes to Jairus's house,
there was a tumult. Now, how many in here, when you
run across these old terms like this, just read on past it and
think you know what it means and just, but it's not a word
we use in our day very much, is it? Tumult. I don't think
I've ever heard it mentioned in my lifetime. tumult. What in the world is a tumult?
So I like to stop and go back and look these things up and
see what it's talking about. Well, the dictionary said a tumult
is a disorderly commotion. That's what it is. A disorderly
commotion. A mass of people agitated in
mind and emotion. An angry uprising. Can't explain
what's going on. Emotions have taken over and
they're just out there wailing and crying and doing what people do when they
lose control. No doubt they were assigning
blame to this and that and the other. And no doubt a lot of
it was coming toward our Lord Jesus. Verse 39, and our Lord
said to them, why make you this ado? And weep. The damsel's not dead. She's
sleeping. She's sleeping. Now wait a minute. She wasn't
breathing. I know I've lost not only one
very close to me, but many. I've sat by their dying bed,
and when they die, they don't breathe anymore. They just lay
there. She wasn't breathing. She wasn't
gasping for air. She had been. She wasn't... Now
she's cold. She was burning up with a fever.
Now she's cold. She's stiff. And for all intents
and purposes, she's dead. Verse 40. When he told her, told
them that she was just sleeping, here's what they said to her,
to him, they said, and they laughed him to scorn. What'd he do about that? He said,
get out. Know what that says? But when
he had put them all out, all the tumult, all the scorning
laughers, all the mockers, all the unbelievers, when he put
them out, he taketh the father and the mother of the damsel,
and them that were with him, and Luke and He tells us it was
Peter, James, and John. And they went in where the damsel
was lying. And he took the damsel by the
hand and said unto her, Damsel, I say unto thee, Arise. Arise. She was dead. No, she was just sleeping. Keep it just sleeping. Now if
I can, I wanna give you four things about a sleeping death
that we need to know. And the first thing is this. All the death of God's saints
is referred to as sleep. Them that sleepeth shall he bring
with him when he comes. Isn't that what it says? What did he tell them about Lazarus?
Lazarus is not dead. Yeah, he was. Been in the tomb
three days. No, he's not dead, he's just
sleeping. He's just sleeping. All the death of God's saints
is referred to by our Lord as sleep. Old Lazarus, he was no
different than the damsel. He laid cold and still. He'd
been in that tomb for three days. He wasn't talking or moving about,
neither one of them. No physical signs of life, but
our Lord said they were sleeping. And our Lord said this, the hour
is coming and now is when the dead shall hear the voice of
the Son of God and they that hear shall live. He said, in a moment, in the
twinkling of an eye, at the last trump, for the trumpet shall
sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we
shall be changed. When the believer draws his or
her last breath, this body ceases to function. It don't
function anymore. The decay of this old tent begins,
and what was taken from the dust begins to return to the dust.
But they're not gonna stay in the dust. That's not their lot. You know
why? Because they're just sleeping.
They're just sleeping. Christ himself shall call them
with the voice of God and all who lie sleeping in the dust
shall come forth and be joined again with a new body, an incorruptible
body. and drawn up to meet him in the
air. Now I'm not gonna say much this
morning about the unbelieving to whom Christ would not even
allow to see this miracle of life. And I don't know if you
know it or not, but when a man is saved, when a person hears
the gospel of Jesus Christ and believes on him, God called him forth from the
grave. He's woken up that sleeping sinner. He was dead, isn't that what
Paul said in Ephesians chapter two? You hath he quickened who
were dead in trespasses and sins? He woke you up. He woke you up. Men are born dead, they live
dead, they die in their sins and enter into the second death,
which is eternal. But to all those chosen in Christ,
whether they're infants or drive old age, they sleep in Christ. They sleep in him. So all those
who believe are referred to in the scriptures and by our Lord
especially as sleeping. And the second thing I want you
to think about is this sleep is not perpetual. It don't go
on and on and on. There is a point which our God
has appointed to each and every one of his saints to wake him
up. To wake him up. I don't know if a lot of people
think, well, this is just one of those circumstantial things,
you know. As luck would have it, I hear that all the time.
Now, our Lord was on His way, on purpose, to wake up this young
damsel. And He knew she was sleeping. And then I tell you this, if
a person is asleep, they can be awakened. If they're sleeping. They can be awakened. There's only one sense in which
death can be called sleep, and that is that our Lord has purposed
to awake them. Our Lord said the sickness of
Lazarus was not unto death, but for the glory of God, that the
Son of God might be glorified in him. Our Lord was glorified
in the raising of this young girl. And then he said this, our friend
Lazarus sleepeth, but I go that I might awake him out of sleep. Now this is true of physical
death, which shall be overcome at the resurrection by our Lord
at the last day, but it's especially true of spiritual death, which
we all experience, and of which some are called from death unto
life. Not a popular doctrine, but our
Lord is called the Lamb slain before the foundation of the
world. In the mind and purpose of God,
he slayed his son for the salvation of sinners before the world began. Abraham's son Isaac was dead
in that old man's mind when he left the house. He was dead in
his mind when he raised that knife to plunge it into the heart
of his son. And had not God stayed his hand,
he would have stabbed his son in the heart just as sure as
we're sitting here this morning. And even so, Christ was slain
before the foundation of the world in the purpose of God.
And from that moment, everyone given to him by the Father would
only sleep the sleep of death after the fall. Everyone. They're just asleep. He's gonna
wake them up. They're waiting the calling of
God to raise them from the dead. Well, don't that do away with
the necessity of the death of Christ on the cross? No, it establishes
it. God has purposed it. It's gonna
come to pass. Our lives, we're told, are hid
with God in Christ, and when he shall appear, we'll appear
with him. And I preach, and I go where I'm invited, knowing that
Christ has purposed to wake up chosen sinners through the hearing
of the gospel. He sent out the 70, and he said,
he that heareth you, heareth me. Some of them heard. Some of them didn't. Some of
them didn't. Paul said in Ephesians 5.9, for
God hath not appointed us to wrath, but to obtain salvation
by the Lord Jesus Christ who died for us, that whether we
wake or sleep, we should live together in him. That's the purpose
of God. The spirit of death is but sleep
to the elect of God, for God is purposed to call them from
death unto life, and then thirdly, there's no hope of the sleeping
saints being awakened except by the Lord. I can't wake them
up. Lord knows I've tried. I can't
wake anybody up. They'll just lay there until
the Lord says, get up. When he says, arise, and takes
you by the hand, you will arise. When he says, live, you'll live. When he says, Lazarus, come forth,
you'll come forth. I can't wake up sleeping sinners,
but he can. He can. And he's chosen to do
this through the preaching of the gospel. When he said, he that heareth
you, heareth me, he's not just talking about their audible voice,
but he's talking about a hearing in the heart and understanding
in the mind and believing in the heart. Hearing is always followed by
obedience when you hear him. He took this 12-year-old girl
and he said, arise. And she rose. You know, when your words have
fallen upon the ears of a sleeping saint, when they awake out of
sleep and stand with their Lord, now they're living. God said this, He said, Awake
thou that sleepest, arise from the dead, and Christ shall give
you light. And this light is gospel light,
the light of Christ. He said, I'm the light of the
world. And then fourthly, those who are sleeping the sleep of
the dead can be awakened. They can be. There's multiple
accounts in the scriptures of the dead being raised to life.
I forget if it was Elijah or Elisha, but one of them's bones
were lying in the grave, and they threw another man in on
top of him. And when he hid his bones, he come back to life. There's accounts all through
the scriptures of the dead being raised to life. It's not something
normal. It's not something usual. But
neither is it something new. This has been the purpose of
God from the very beginning, and he's demonstrated it over
and over and over, all through the scriptures. God has not left us without a
hope. Job asked this question, he said,
if a man dies, shall he live again? All the days of my appointed
time will I wait, he said, until my change comes. He said, I know
this, I'll stand in this body on this earth and I'll see God. And I'll see him with my eyes
and not with somebody else's. Thou shalt call and I will answer
thee. And what is true of the resurrection
and the last day is true of the spiritual resurrection of all
his saints. You can read about it in the
last parts of Ephesians chapter 1 and the first part of Ephesians
chapter 2. The scripture said there is the
first resurrection and the second. The first resurrection is that
which Paul speaks of in Colossians 1.18, saying he's the head of
the body of the church who is the beginning, the firstborn
from the dead. That's the first resurrection,
is the resurrection of Christ. According to Ephesians 2, 6,
and 7, when God raised him up from the dead, he raised us up
with him. And so he says in Revelation
20, verse 6, blessed and holy is he that hath part in the first
resurrection. On such the second death hath
no power. God has purposed to call out
all that sleep out of darkness. to wake all those that sleep
in Him. And that's the purpose of this
local church and this pastor and the gospel we preach. And
that was what was taking place on this day. He was going to
call this damsel from death unto life. A sleeping death is a death purposed
to glorify the Son of God. And so He is glorified every
time He does it. Just as he was on that day when
that girl stood up, can you imagine? They all were amazed and wondered,
it said, as they looked on this little girl. Had her by the hand
and walked her out of that house, out to where that tumult was,
and all those unbelievers and all those laughing mockers, and
brought her out. And I imagine to his words, she
had some words to add. and you see what the Lord's done
for me. All right, thank you.