Now this story is a source of
much spiritual treasure, and we have often referred to it
in our preaching, probably preached from this text maybe two or three
times since I've been here, I can't remember. I know that the image
of this often comes to my mind, and if I were an artist, this
is one of the scenes I would draw. Evidently, making her way through
the crowd on hands and knees. Because it doesn't say that she
touched his collar. It says she touched the hem,
the fringe, at the very bottom of the robe that he was wearing. And so she was down low. And
evidently she tried to do this on the fly. She didn't want to be noticed.
She didn't want to be seen. But however she came, she did
come. And I have seen in my picture
this woman touching the hem of his garment, and the disease
from which she could find no relief was immediately removed. And that's a beautiful image
in my mind. For you know, when the sinner, by grace, lays hold
of Jesus Christ, however they do it. You know, so often we
try to lay out a plan, a series of steps through which a person
must go. And we put people under burdens
they don't need to be under. But however that sinner lays
hold of Christ, with whatever understanding they lay hold of
him. That is, whatever measure of
understanding they are able to lay hold of him. When they do,
immediately, they are healed. Immediately, they are saved. But here's what attracted me,
what made me consider, meditate on this scripture over the last
several days. It's this phrase, It says, when
she realized that she could not go unnoticed. That's 47, verse 47. Seeing that she could not go
unnoticed. And here is the title and theme
of this morning's message. Faith cannot go unnoticed. Now, we could preach a message
about the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the grace of our God,
and He is our God, the grace of our God and how it was exercised
toward this woman. And I believe we've done that
before, and even in the things we say here, His grace is going
to be revealed. But what I want to look at this
morning is, shall we say, the other side of the coin, the faith
that was exercised by this woman in coming to the Lord Jesus Christ.
What is faith? How is it revealed? And to especially
take note of this, at least this is what brought me to this portion
of scripture, or shall I say what stopped me at this portion
of scripture, is this, that faith, God-given, saving faith, cannot
go unnoticed. Though some have tried, like
this woman. But it will be seen, it will
be known. this work of grace in this woman's heart and understand
that even though the story is about the healing of a physical
affliction, yet our Lord understood. He knew this woman. For the foundation
of God stands sure, having this seal, the Lord knows them that
are his. And he knew her heart and he knew that she believed
God. And so he did not say so much
that you're reaching, has saved you. He said your faith has healed
you. Now note indeed this. This woman
had faith. You know, we kind of beat ourselves
up when we're prone to do that, or whether or not we have faith.
Do I really believe? And I know why we do that. There's
a couple of reasons. So much hinges on that question.
Now, if it didn't matter very much whether or not we had faith,
we probably wouldn't give it much attention. But we do know
what the scriptures say, he that believes and is baptized shall
be saved, he that believeth not shall be damned. That's what
the scriptures say. And so we realize that upon that believing,
upon faith, hinges this issue of our eternal destiny. And so
it's an important issue. And here's another reason. We
worry so much about it. Religion has so obscured and
confused us as to what faith is. Particularly, those things taught
to us when we're young make it very difficult for us in our
mind or in our in our brain and our intellect to discern this
thing, whether or not we believe. Because preachers, and I've done
it too, I plead guilty to this kind of thing, but they have
so defined faith and its expression that we can always find ways
in which we come up short of meeting the standard of what
some preacher said real faith is. And yet faith is such a simple
thing. Now, this woman had faith, and
here's one way we know. The Lord said she did. She didn't
have a very bold faith, that is, in the presence of people. She didn't come marching up to
the Lord. She snuck in. She didn't make a big fanfare
of it. And actually, for that reason, I kind of respect this
woman. She wasn't being a show-off about
her faith. No. But the Lord said, the Lord
knew it. Well, while nobody else at first
could see it, yet the Lord knew it. And the Lord said of this
woman, your faith. So I would that the Lord would
come to me and tell me that I believe. I would that the Lord would stand
in front of this congregation and point at me and say, his
faith has saved me. Let me let you know a little
secret. I wish that too, but it ain't going to happen. And
why? Because we already have a testimony
just like that. We have the testimony of Scriptures
if we'll conform our thinking to what the Scriptures say rather
than to what preachers say and to what religion says. If we
just look at what the Scriptures say, we can know whether or not
we believe. And we have an inward witness if we believe. It says
that in the book of Galatians, it says, by faith, we have been
made the sons of God, by faith in Christ Jesus. And it says,
because of this, he has sent the spirit of his son in us,
crying, Abba, Father. You children of God, have you
ever noticed that no matter how much you doubt yourselves, no
matter how much you are under the sense of sin and unbelief
and all that, yet for some reason within you is the cry, Abba,
Father. That word Abba being the Aramaic
term of endearment for a father, akin to dad or daddy. Have you ever noticed that no
matter how much you have sinned against your father, yet you
still call him father, and it seems right in your heart to
do so? Now, I know that there are some
that might presume to call him father. And maybe it would be sheer presumption
on their part. But I think, too, that many of
them, if not all of them, realize that they're doing so because
that's just what somebody said they were supposed to say. Our
father, which art in heaven. And so we inherit it. But there
is within the child of God, I believe, what we might call a natural
tendency to call upon God as their father. For so he has revealed
himself to them. The Lord said this woman had
faith. But we cannot doubt, even if
we doubt our own faith, we can't doubt that this woman had faith.
We have the Lord's own word on it. There's another thing that tells
us this woman had faith, and that's her actions. What she
did revealed that she believed God and believed the testimony
of the Lord Jesus Christ. What did she do? Well, she came
to Him and touched the fringe of His garment. You know, folks do a whole lot
to try to prove they have faith. Here's the one proof of faith.
Faith always propels a person to come to Christ. That is the very, that is the
exercise of faith. No doubt she knew about her condition
because she'd been going to all kinds of doctors to try to get
it remedied. And of course she spent all she
had and didn't get any good out of it. Doctors back then couldn't
handle her problem. She knew her condition and she
heard of Christ. I mean, she wouldn't have come
to him if she hadn't heard of him. As Paul says, how shall they
believe on him of whom they've not heard? So she did hear of
Jesus Christ. But here's the thing. This woman
was possessed of something that mere religionists don't have. She had faith. And her faith
would not let her be satisfied with knowing her condition. Faith
would not let her be satisfied with merely hearing that there
was a remedy. Faith propelled her to go to
Christ and receive from Him that which she needed for the healing
of her body. Folks sometimes get the idea
that there is a virtue in knowing the sinfulness of their condition.
They think, well, I know I'm a sinner. That's got to count
for something. That doesn't count for anything if that's all that you've got.
If simply knowing the seriousness of your condition is all you
have, then you don't have anything that will save your soul. And
people will sit there for year after year wallowing in what
they call humility, but it's nothing but self-righteous pride.
Going around trying to impress people, and they're trying to
impress God with how broken up they are about their sin. Well,
you have no faith if all you do is wallow in the knowledge
of your guilt. And some people hear the gospel
of the Lord Jesus Christ and it warms their heart. I mean, it will bring a tear
to their eye. It will make their emotions well
up within them to think that there is salvation for a sinner
like them. But that still doesn't mean anything.
Can you imagine that woman sitting in her home there with that issue
of blood and her life oozing out of her? She knows this is
a problem for the rest of her life unless somebody does something
and she hears about Christ. She says, oh, there's somebody
that can heal me. And tears come to her eyes and she sits there
in her house rejoicing over the thought that she could. be healed. What good would that do her?
Here's what faith does and what faith always does. Faith goes
to Christ. Always. And that's how we know
that this woman believed. Whatever else she may have done
or whatever she may have failed to do up to this point Here's
one testimony we know about this woman. She came to Christ. And weak as may have been her
coming to Him, as much as she may have tried to hide the fact,
nonetheless, she came to Him. And according to the promise
of the Lord, Him that comes to me I will in no wise cast out,
the Lord did not cast aside this woman. Her touch, prompted by faith,
resulted that the power of God went into her, went out of Christ
and into her to fix that problem she had, a problem nobody else
could fix. You know, this is what James
means when he says that faith without works is dead. He doesn't
mean that faith without works of charity is dead or faith without
works of morality is dead. He means a faith that you don't
act on is dead. And if you come here within this
assembly and you hear the preaching of the gospel, and you're put
under a sense of your sin, and then you're put under a sense
of the hope that is in Christ Jesus, and yet you do not trust
the Lord Jesus Christ, it was all for nothing. Our Lord did
not say your knowledge of your disease has healed you. He did
not say your knowledge of my power to heal has saved you,
has healed you. He said your faith, your believing,
which prompted you to come to me and touch the hem of my garment.
That's what did it. Our Lord calls this faith her
faith. And according to our good Calvinistic
principles, we might say, wait a minute, you know, faith is
the gift of God. Yes, it is. But, you know, I got a lot of
things in my house that were given to me as gifts. And you
know what? They're mine. They're mine. The fact that they
were given to me as a gift doesn't change the fact they're mine,
does it? And the fact that this faith that this woman had was
a sovereign gift of God given to her and worked in her by the
power of God does not mean it wasn't her faith. I hear people
say, put your faith in Christ. Well, any faith you have naturally,
you'll never put it in Christ anyway. Natural faith always
looks for natural remedies. But this God-given faith, and
that's what the Bible tells us that in Ephesians chapter two,
it says, for by grace are you saved through faith. And that's
not of yourselves. It's the gift of God. So this
faith that saves. It is the gift of God, and yet
it belongs to the person who has it. Christ did not say to
this woman, your parents' faith has made you whole. I don't know whether or not her
parents believed, but it wouldn't have mattered how much they believed.
It wouldn't have fixed her. He didn't say that your synagogue's
faith or your synagogue's good creed has made you whole. He
didn't say, Your Rabbi's faith has made you whole. He said,
Your faith has made you whole. And I want to make this point,
and I want to make it, and may the Lord God make it powerful
to everyone here, particularly you young people. Some of you,
you grow up in this church, and that's good. What a blessing
from God you have had, to grow up in a church where the gospel
is preached regularly, where the truth of God is declared. Your parents, according to the
grace given them, have sacrificed to make this church possible.
And they've brought you here to hear the word of God preached.
But let me say this plainly as I know it. Their faith won't
save you. This church's faithfulness to
the gospel will not save you. My faith won't save you. If you
are to be saved, if you are to find deliverance from your sins,
you must believe. Is that clear? I hope it's clear
and I hope it's powerful. Don't fall into the trap that
actually I believe several generations of people from this area have
fallen into. And it gets worse with every
generation. You young people don't fall in the trap of thinking
that because you're in the right church, it's OK with your soul. It's not. You, an individual person without
consideration of who your parents are, without consideration of
where you go to church or what the people around you believe,
without consideration of anybody else, you must believe or perish
one of the other. He says to this woman here, verse
48, daughter, your faith has healed you. Here's the interesting thing.
This woman walked through a lot of believing people to get to
Christ. They were all crowding around
him. Their faith didn't heal her. She walked through a bunch
of disciples. Handpicked by the Lord Jesus
himself. And she probably rubbed against
them as she was making her way there. Didn't heal her. Her faith,
propelling her to Christ, healed her. Don't trust the grace that
you may see in the people around you. What you need is not in
us. It's in Christ. And may God grant
to each person here, young and old alike, the grace to believe. May He give you faith so that
you, separate from everyone else, you would believe. And this woman's faith saved
her. You may say it does not say saved,
it says healed. That's true. It's what our English
translation says. But it's the very same verb that
is normally translated saved. Now, why do I want to make this
point? Why do I want to emphasize this? We who believe in sovereign
grace, and we do, I believe in God's sovereign election of a
people whom he will save. He chose them before the foundation
of the world, and He chose them without regard to anything that's
in them. And I believe that Jesus Christ shed His blood for them
and for nobody else, because the blood of Christ is not wasted.
The justice of God will not punish a person twice, punish Christ
for their sins, and then punish them too. It can't happen. And
I believe that the Holy Spirit of God comes with the omnipotent
power of God, and He takes these things of Christ and reveals
them to His elect. To them, He reveals them so that
they do know them and they do believe them. I believe all those things. And
yet some will take theology such as that, and maybe with, beginning
with some good motives, I don't know, but they try to protect,
as it were, this truth of God, and act as though Act as though
faith has nothing to do with salvation. Despite all the scriptures that
say contrary. They will preach the gospel to
people, and then they'll just say, in a sense, now I won't
say this in so many words, but here's what the people come away
with. You just sit there and see if God comes and bonks you
on the head. When I was in the first grade,
we would play a game. Every time we'd go to the library,
You know, once a week, I think they took us to the library and
we'd pick out some books. And when we were lining up to
leave, they would play this game called Fairy Touch and everybody
put their head down on the table. And then one would be chosen
and he would go or she would go and touch somebody else on
the head. And then the first person to get in line and the
one that just been touched, he'd get up and he'd go around and
touch someone else. And you couldn't get in line until somebody chose
you, you know, and picked you to get in line. And a lot of
people treat the preaching of the gospel and response to the
gospel like a game of fairy touch. And they tell somebody, don't
you do anything until you feel the touch. Friends, God never
told us to feel anything. He told us to believe the gospel
and that he that believes and is baptized should be saved.
And we dare not tell anybody anything else. We dare not act
as though their faith does not save when the scripture says
it does. Say, well, it's Christ that saves.
That's true. Well, it's grace that saves. That's true. And
it's equally true that faith saves. Let's never try to wrestle
the scriptures to fit our theology. Let's change our theology to
fit the scriptures. And I tell you this day, if you
believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, you will be saved. You will be. If you trust your soul in Him,
you will be saved. And nobody in heaven will try
to change that. And nobody in heaven or hell,
excuse me, nobody in earth or hell can change that. But this Greek word, where it
says, your faith, has healed you is the word commonly translated
saved. There are three words the Bible
has in it that is the Greek New Testament has in it that are
translated heal. One of them actually means to
minister to. And it's the word from which
we get our English word therapy. And then there's another word
that's found again, we get some medical words in English from
it. But it means to doctor, to heal, to make whole. But on a
few occasions, this word, sozo, that's what it is in Greek, sozo,
it's used with regard to heal. It's used here. It's found a couple of times
in Acts, and it's found in the book of James where it says, that faith will heal the sick.
The interesting thing to note, and I went through that little
search program I've got on the computer, and I looked up every
instance of the word heal or health or something like that.
And every time I was able to find it, it always had some reference
to faith. Had some reference to faith.
Now, there are a lot of times when the New Testament speaks
of Christ as healing. But this time here, when it speaks
of healing in the same word as salvation is used, it says your
faith has healed you. Your faith has saved you. Look
back up here at the last verse of chapter 7, Luke chapter 7. Here's another story. And here's a woman. who has come
in to where the Lord was eating, and she wept, and the tears fell
down on her feet, and poured perfume on the Lord's feet, and
washed His feet with her hair. And He said to her in verse 48,
Your sins are forgiven. And then He says to the woman
in verse 50, Your faith has saved you. And it's exactly the same
phrase that our Lord says to this woman later on when he says,
your faith has healed you. Do you see how the scriptures
join faith and salvation? They can't be taken apart. He that believes shall be saved. And I like it that the Lord joined
these two concepts of Salvation and health, because salvation
is well described by being healed. In the book of Isaiah, chapter
35, it says, Then shall the ears of the deaf be opened, or eyes of the blind be opened,
and the ears of the deaf be unstopped. Then shall the lame man leap
like a deer, and the tongue of the mute shall speak. What's
he talking about? He's talking about the coming
of the Lord to bring salvation. Salvation is not merely a change
in our destination, it's a very change of our persons. Now, this
change doesn't occur all at once. Scriptures say he that began
a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ is
done, for the most part, in two big steps. Man is a two-part
creature. He is his body and his spirit. And the first thing God does
is heal the spirit of a man. And everyone who's been regenerated,
everyone who's been born again, he's been healed in the spiritual
man. And in due time, by the resurrection,
we'll be healed also in our bodies. To where in both body and spirit.
We shall be like the Lord Jesus Christ. Look over here at Second
Timothy, chapter 1, verse 7. I find this, this was interesting
and helpful. I've read a lot of things in
my life that were interesting, but they didn't really prove all that
helpful. But this one is both interesting and helpful. In verse 7, Paul says to Timothy,
Second Timothy, chapter 1, Verse 7, For God did not give us a
spirit of timidity or cowardice, but a spirit of power, of love,
and of self-discipline. Now that word translated self-discipline,
that's a reasonable translation of the word. And it's one of
those, even in Greek, it's a compound word, but part of that word is
this Greek word for save. And here's what God has given
to every one of His people. He's given them a healthy mind.
And I don't mean a healthy emotional mind. I'm talking about the spiritual
mind. It says the mind of the flesh
cannot please God, but God's given every one of His people
a spiritual mind. Paul preached one time, and he
was laying out the gospel of God's grace, and the person that
he was speaking to said, Paul, all your education, you've just
lost your mind. You've gone crazy. I tell you,
believers, the only one who's not crazy. He looks crazy to
the world. Why, he believes that he's righteous,
even though he knows himself to be a sinner. He believes that
he shall live forever, even though he feels the motions of death
within him. He trusts a man to save him, a man he's never seen.
He worships a man and calls him God. He believes his sins have
been washed away by the sacrifice of somebody who was born and
died 2,000 years ago. That sounds crazy. Yes, it does,
unless you've been given a healthy mind, unless your mind has been
saved, unless you've had spiritual sanity restored. The world thinks believers are
insane. Believers realize they never were sane until they could
see Christ and see in Him all they need. for this life and
the next. That's sane thinking. Everything
else is crazy. Every believer has been healed
in his inner man, been healed in his mind. He knows what the
truth is. Just like that man in the tombs.
The Lord came and cast all those demons out of him, and it says,
and there he was, clothed and in his right mind. And believers
are clothed in the righteousness of Christ, and they're in their
right mind. Christ healed them. Our mind
is healed so that we may know him. Our spiritual feet are healed
so that we may come to him. Our spiritual hands are healed
that we might embrace Him. Our spiritual ears are healed
that we might hear Him. And our spiritual tongue is healed
that we might praise Him. And nobody but a believer can
do that. That's why the Old Testament
says, Shall the dead praise Him? No. Just those that are spiritually
alive. Now, this faith cannot be hidden. And it cannot be hidden from
God. nor man. You can't hide faith from God
because it's God that gives it. This woman, it says, seeing that
she could not go unnoticed. Faith never goes unnoticed by
God. Most of the world, and you know
in our flesh we do this too, we're going around trying to
get noticed by God. God, see me? I'm being good,
you know, just like a little kid trying to be noticed by one
of his parents, you know? See what I'm doing? See how good
I've been? You know, Mommy, I cleaned up
my room. What do you think of that? And
the kid's not really wanting you to notice the room. It's
him they want to be. They want noticed. And we're doing that
same thing so often. We're trying to get noticed by
God. And we get moral. We get religious. We do all kinds
of things. And we're kind of like, God,
notice me! Here's one thing God notices.
Faith in His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. It never goes without
the eye of God seeing it. He put it there. And He loves
it. And He rejoices in it. We might add this, if God rejoices
in it, so should we. We ought to be glad for faith
more than we are anything else that we see in this world. We
ought to jump up and down and do cartwheels and handsprings
and everything else, at least on the inside, if not on the
outside. When we find that somebody believes the gospel, God notices all faith. And I'll tell you this, if you
believe God, People around you are going to notice it too. It
cannot be hidden. This woman tried to, and it didn't
work. It didn't work. It cannot be hidden because Christ
can't be hidden. Even our Lord Jesus, it says
of Him, He went to a place, a secret place, wanted to get some time
to Himself and rest and pray. But He couldn't keep Himself
hidden. People found Him out there. And you know, faith is
that which lays hold of Christ, and faith attaches one to Christ,
and so to speak, faith brings Christ within the heart of a
man. And you know, that can't be hidden any more than you can
hide Christ. It cannot be hidden if you really
believe God is going to be found out on you, so no use trying
to hide. In verse 47, it says that this
woman, seeing that she could not go unnoticed, came trembling
and fell at his feet. In the presence of all the people,
she told why she had touched him and how she had been instantly
healed. This woman evidently, well, she'd
been an outcast, you know, because under the law, her disease made
her unclean. This woman could not touch nor
be touched. Anybody who touched her would
be made unclean like her. And she could not be purified
under the law until the bleeding stopped. Therefore, she probably had learned
to live in the shadows, outside the gaze of people. They probably considered her
under a curse from God. And you know how that is. If
society looks down their long nose at you, you pretty well
learn how to stay out of their sight, don't you? That's the
way this woman lived. But when Christ healed her, this
woman who'd lived in the shadows, this woman who didn't want to
be seen or noticed readily confessed what had brought her there and
what had happened when she came. You know, an unconfessed faith
is a dead faith. It just plain is. You can secretly
believe God all you want, it won't save your soul. Why? Because
the faith that can remain hidden is not the faith that is the
gift of God. Our Lord says, if you won't confess
Me before men, I won't confess you before My Father. If you
won't own up to Me, I won't own up to you. Sneaky Christians, it just won't
work. Faith that is a gift of God is
not hidden from God and is not hidden from men. You say, well, why did this woman
try to sneak? I think she tried to sneak for the very same reason
that many people start out that way. They're convinced of the
power of Christ, but they're not convinced of the grace of
Christ. Like that leper who came to our
Lord and said, if you are willing, you can make me clean. He was
convinced of the Lord's ability. He didn't know if the Lord was
willing. And this woman, you can imagine in her condition,
twelve years of being an outcast, twelve years of not being able
to embrace anybody, lest she make them unclean. And she's
probably thinking to herself, you know, I've heard that this
Jesus can heal, but you know, if he touched me, he'd be unclean.
And I don't know if he was willing to do that. If I ask him, he
might say, no, don't get near me, you're an unclean thing.
I mean, I sympathize with you and all that, but I can't take
on your uncleanness. Well, she didn't understand all
about Christ. She understood enough to make
her go, and that's all you need to know. You need to know enough
of Christ to make you go to Him. But her coming to Him was somewhat
faulty and weak because she didn't realize that absorbing her uncleanness
would be exactly the way that He healed her. You say, what
do you mean? Yeah, by touching her, excuse
me, by her touching Him, She made him unclean. And by her
touching him, she was made clean. God made him who had no sin to
be sin for us in order that we might be made the righteousness
of God in Him. All we like sheep have gone astray.
We've turned everyone to his own way, but the Lord hath laid
on him, hath made him unclean with the iniquity of us all. Faith comes, and if it's properly
instructed, it realizes in touching the Lord Jesus Christ, the sin
goes out of the sinner. The sinner's sin goes out of
the sinner, and the righteousness of Christ comes back in. Yes,
he was made unclean with our uncleanness, and he was cast
out of the presence of God on the account of it. But that will never stop the
Lord. from healing and from saving them who come to God through
Him. You say, well, that's all been
done. I understand that. The transfer, so to speak, of
the guilt and righteousness has all been gone, and yet it's replayed,
so to speak, every time a sinner believes. So come to Him in all
your uncleanness. The law requires you to become
clean. before you can approach God.
The gospel says, come in your own cleanness to the Lord Jesus
Christ to be cleansed. And all your sins, no matter
how long they've been around, this woman had been bleeding
like this for 12 years, all your sins, no matter how much they've
weakened you, you can imagine how weak this woman was. All
your sins, no matter how much they've cast you, into the ill
light of society. All your sins, no matter how
many, all your sins, no matter how all your labors to stop them
have been for nothing, all your sins, immediately gone. So what about my future sins?
Remember this, when Christ died for our sins, they were all future. So don't worry about that past,
present, future stuff. It means nothing to God. Have you the faith of this woman? Do you have a faith that will
lay hold of Christ? And do you have a faith that
cannot go unnoticed, cannot go unconfessed, cannot be hidden? God grant it be so.