Only Believe
Pastor Marty Tuesday, August 6, 2019 at 1:20PM Mark 5:35-43. This sermon was preached by Pastor Marty Bonner on Sunday, August 04, 2019.
In our story today, we have a little girl who has been sick and is on her death-bed. However, Jesus was headed to her house to heal her. That is the good news. The bad news is that, between the crowd pressing in on Jesus and a sick woman being healed by touching him, Jesus does not get to her house soon enough to heal her before she dies.
Do you ever feel like God is taking too long to get around to your situation and your need? Our story teaches us to trust the Lord Jesus, rather than letting fear drive us into a bitter, hard place where we ridicule those who trust God.
Jesus is going to give us the simple phrase, “Do not fear; only believe.” This is easier said than done, but it is necessary nonetheless. This life is filled with things that will stir up fear in our hearts and minds. May God help us to walk with faith, trusting his heart for us and his power over what ails us.
They receive news about the sick daughter
Just as Jesus is telling the woman who had been healed of her flow of blood that she can go in peace, someone from Jairus’ house arrives and tells him the news about his daughter. She has died. They were too late. You can imagine how such news hit Jairus. No doubt, his heart sunk and fear rose up within him. He had risked everything in going to get Jesus and it had failed. It is a reality in life that certain events can shake us to our core. Perhaps we need to experience such times. It is in such times that we can learn just how much God cares about us and has humbled his self in order to save us. God understands the heart of a father who loses a little daughter or anyone who has lost a loved one to sickness or evil in any form. He too has experienced the pain of seeing those whom he created to enjoy him forever then falling to the lies of the devil. Whatever your grief, know this. God understands and experiences your pain far more than you know.
The person who brought the bad news asks, “Why trouble the teacher any further?” His counsel is for Jairus to slink away from the group, go home, and bury his daughter. However, we should ask a different question. Was Jairus “troubling” Jesus? Are we a “trouble” to God? Sure our choices have brought a lot of trouble and pain into the relationship between us and God. In that sense we are a trouble. However, God has chosen to go with us through this choice. He did not abandon us after the fall in the Garden, but pursued us with a love that paid the price for our sins and made a place for us at his side. We can sometimes let our ideas of God, and “the holy prophet,” create a surreal world where they are too great to be bothered with our puny issues. Nowhere in Scripture will you find God angry that the lowest people might ask him for the smallest of things. It is quite the opposite. Everywhere He calls to us to trust him, believe him, and bring our troubles to him. It is we in our hurts and pains who develop such odd notions that God shouldn’t be troubled with our troubles. It is misguided “holy men” who act like that and allow sycophants around them to push others aside. If one thing can be said about Jesus, it is that he didn’t mind being troubled by the troubles of anyone who simply believed in him. So, why trouble Jesus any further? We should “trouble” him because he is the only one who understands our situation and can help us. That’s why!
Jesus graciously steps in and gives Jairus the words that he needs to hear. The first part is not to be afraid. This is a very common phrase in the Bible. We see it everywhere that God is challenging people to follow him into tough places. Fear is very powerful in whipping up our imagination, but its worst effect is to neutralize our faith in God. We don’t have to fear because God is with us.
The second part of what Jesus tells him is to “only believe.” An old song within the church says it this way.
"Only believe; only believe.
All things are possible; only believe."
With man, so many things are impossible. Even today within our modern, technologically advanced world, we find ourselves in impossible situations, but with God, all things are possible. Why would I fear and doubt when I serve the God of the resurrection? Even fretting and trying to make spiritual sense out of our situation can mislead us. What I am talking about goes beyond trying to get a healing. The little girl in this story is going to be healed, but she will go on to grow old and die. Jesus will not show up then to keep her from dying. Eventually we must all leave this world. The question is not why didn’t God heal me, or keep me from growing old. The question is, “Do I still believe, or have I let fear rob me of my faith in a God who can do anything?” Jesus tells us not to fear and to simply believe God. Trust him.
At this point Jesus instructs the crowd not to follow. We are not told why, but this passage continually emphasizes faith over the top of those who don’t believe. So, this could be in the interest of shedding the crowd that is filled with those who do not believe. However, in verse 43, after he has healed the girl, Jesus tells them not to let people know what he has done. Most likely, Jesus knew that this miraculous resurrection would push up the time schedule for his crucifixion. So, he seems to be narrowing down the potential pool of witnesses.
They arrive at the house of Jairus
When they get to the house, they are met with a scene of great sorrow. There is a loud uproar of weeping and wailing because the girl has died. Perhaps they had been expecting Jesus to show up and heal her, and thus, were caught off guard. We just don’t know if they were all aware of Jairus’ attempt to get Jesus. We are told in the story that the little girl is twelve years old. Watching a young child become sick, grow weak, and then die can be one of the hardest things to endure in this world.
Yet, when Jesus arrives he asks why they are making such a commotion. Even for those who know God, death is something to weep over, especially for any young person. However, their weeping has gone into something beyond the grief and sorrow of the righteous. As believers in God, we grieve over the fact that we will not have them in our life anymore, but we also know that this life is not all that there will be. There is no reason for hysterical wailing and plunging into despair for the believer.
On top of this question, Jesus adds the statement that she is not dead, but sleeping. What is Jesus actually trying to say? I don’t thing Jesus is trying to make a literal point that they are wrong about her death and that she is actually only sleeping. Sleep was often used as a euphemism for death, and just as we can envision a person waking from sleep, so a person can “wake” from death. It is not the same thing, but it is a picture of what can be. He is not trying to create a doctrine that souls actually sleep after a person dies. Rather, he is reminding them of the biblical truth about what happens to people when they die or sleep. They go into the grave, which Daniel had prophesied in Daniel chapter 12 that “And many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, some to shame and everlasting contempt.” Jesus is merely going to “wake” her up from the grave.
The wailing appears to stop at this point and it is replaced with ridicule and scorn against Jesus. We can imagine a kind of bitter venom that we humans vent when we think another person is mocking our pain. They clearly do not get what Jesus is saying, or do not believe that he can do anything about the girl’s death, and so they become angry at his words.
Jesus responds by restricting who goes into the room where the little girl is laying. We are told that Jairus and his wife, the three disciples (Peter, James and John), and Jesus are the only ones who go into the room where the dead girl was. Again, this seems to be partly about removing those who don’t believe and are caught up in the throes of unbelief. Remember, unbelief is not a neutral absence of faith. It is positively something that goes in the opposite direction of faith. It produces such things as: anger, venting, raging, ridicule, scorn, persecution, and many other things.
If you are praying for God to do something in your life, you should not only challenge yourself to believe, but you will also need to get away from those who feed unbelief and its fruit into your heart and mind. I am not saying cut off the relationship, but rather go in the direction of faith without them. In this passage, Jesus gets alone with those that will believe and the girl who needs a miracle.
The healing scene is quite tender. Jesus takes the girl’s hand and simply commands her to rise up. Mark lets us know that Jesus was actually speaking Aramaic, which was the local language for the time. There is good evidence that Jesus may have spoke Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek. He would use one or the other depending on the context. Here he is speaking to fellow Jews and so uses Aramaic. “Talitha” means that you are addressing a little girl. “Cumi” is a simple command to rise.
The power of the command of Christ does not come from him raising his voice loudly. His simple command is enough to bring the girl back from the dead, back to life. 1 Thessalonians 4:16-17 tells us, For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And thus we shall always be with the Lord.” Praise God, he will raise all the dead in the future. It has been humorously stated that, when Jesus resurrected Lazarus, it was important that he said “Lazarus, come forth.” Otherwise, everyone would have come out of the grave! Clearly, this is tongue in cheek, but it states the truth. Jesus has the power to raise the dead, in fact, all the dead. Here he restores the girl to a mortal life, but the day is coming when all the righteous will be raised with immortal bodies and eternal life.
This is the power of Christ and the promise of God. He cares about us. We are to him like little children who have contracted a deadly disease called sin. He will heal us; he will restore us; and he will make us fully whole again, if we will only believe!