FUEL FOR FAITH
If you have a copy of the Scriptures this morning, and I hope
you do, let me ask you to go ahead and turn to Luke 8.
My wife and I have 2 teenage boys. They are 15 and 16. And I
pray for them…a lot. One of my constant prayers for them is
that they would come to know and love and trust Jesus. It is
the deepest longing of my heart for them. So frequently, I just
ask God to give them faith. But I also want them to have a
good life, to have good friends and experience success and
blessing. I want their dreams to come true. Honestly, I just
hate the thought of them experiencing rejection and failure
and disappointment and pain. I want them to know “the
goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.” So I pray.
A while back, I was praying for them and God seemed to
interrupt my praying. And this is what I heard Him say (not an
audible voice, but very clear in my head) “Chris, you keep
asking me to give your sons faith. But then you ask me to give
them the kind of life where they don’t need faith. I can’t do
both. Pick one.” Wow. Here’s what it boils down to: I like the
idea of faith, I just don’t want to be in a position where I need
it. But that’s not how it works. Faith is not a backup plan, it’s a
way of life. The essence of our relationship to God.
This morning, we’re going to look at Luke 8:40-56. It recounts
for us the experience of 2 people who found themselves in
desperate situations. Circumstances where they needed faith.
We’re going to see them respond in faith and experience Jesus
in an incredible way. And as we dig into God’s Word, I want to
try and answer 2 questions: what does it look like to respond
in faith to Jesus? And how do you get that kind of faith?
Let’s look at it together: Luke 8:40-55
40 Now when Jesus returned, the crowd welcomed him, for
they were all waiting for him. 41 And there came a man named
Jairus, who was a ruler of the synagogue. And falling at Jesus'
feet, he implored him to come to his house, 42 for he had an
only daughter, about twelve years of age, and she was dying.
As Jesus went, the people pressed around him. 43 And there
was a woman who had had a discharge of blood for twelve
years, and though she had spent all her living on physicians,
she could not be healed by anyone. 44 She came up behind him
and touched the fringe of his garment, and immediately her
discharge of blood ceased. 45 And Jesus said, “Who was it that
touched me?” When all denied it, Peter said, “Master, the
crowds surround you and are pressing in on you!” 46 But Jesus
said, “Someone touched me, for I perceive that power has
gone out from me.” 47 And when the woman saw that she was
not hidden, she came trembling, and falling down before him
declared in the presence of all the people why she had
touched him, and how she had been immediately healed.
48 And he said to her, “Daughter, your faith has made you
well; go in peace.” 49 While he was still speaking, someone
from the ruler's house came and said, “Your daughter is
dead; do not trouble the Teacher anymore.” 50 But Jesus on
hearing this answered him, “Do not fear; only believe, and she
will be well.” 51 And when he came to the house, he allowed no
one to enter with him, except Peter and John and James, and
the father and mother of the child. 52 And all were weeping
and mourning for her, but he said, “Do not weep, for she is
not dead but sleeping.” 53 And they laughed at him, knowing
that she was dead. 54 But taking her by the hand he called,
saying, “Child, arise.” 55 And her spirit returned, and she got up
at once.
I don’t know about you, but there are places in my own life, in
the lives of family and friends where I want to see God work
like He did here. I want to approach God in faith and draw
near to Him (Hebrews 11:6) believing that He exists and that
he rewards those who seek him. I want to respond in faith.
1. What does it look like to respond in faith to Jesus? Look
with me at verses 41-42
41 And there came a man named Jairus, who was a ruler of the
synagogue. And falling at Jesus' feet, he implored him to come
to his house, 42 for he had an only daughter, about twelve
years of age, and she was dying. (put them on the screen, but
I’m not going to read them)
When it says “she was dying” it’s an idiomatic expression for
almost dead. She is literally just a breath or two away from the
end of her life. This little girl was Jairus’ one and only
daughter, and her life mattered more to him than anything.
Jairus is called the “ruler of the synagogue” That means he
was responsible for the operating of the synagogue. He chose
who participated in the weekly services and kept things in
order. Jairus was one of the religious elite and a man of high
standing in the community. That makes his actions here very
significant. Because to many of the people Jesus was nothing
more than an itinerate preacher. He’d already been kicked out
of numerous synagogues and was the target of the religious
establishment. For Jairus to prostrate himself and plead for
help from Jesus was not just humiliating, it was potentially
costly. But none of that mattered, because he was driven by
his need and a belief that Jesus could help.
Now look back at verses 43-44 (put them on the screen, but
I’m not going to read them)
43 And there was a woman who had had a discharge of blood
for twelve years, and though she had spent all her living on
physicians, she could not be healed by anyone. 44 She came up
behind him and touched the fringe of his garment,
and immediately her discharge of blood ceased.
In the crowd was a woman who is very sick. We’ll talk more
about the nature and implications of her sickness a little later.
But what I want you to see here is her desperation – 12 years
of physical agony. 12 years of trying everything she could find
to try in order to get well. It says she spent everything she had
seeking medical treatment. So now she is dead broke – but
none of that has brought her any relief. She’s beyond
desperate. She’d heard about Jesus. Maybe she had even
witnessed some of his miracles from a distance. So she slipped
in from behind and quietly reached out and “touched the
fringe of his garment.”
I’m going to say this as simply as I can –
Responding in faith is believing in God’s goodness and asking
for help. It looks like reaching out. It’s coming to the end of
yourself and your resources and holding out your hand to
Jesus. A humble, hopeful, quiet touch. It looks like falling
down at Jesus feet and casting your anxiety on Him. Crying out
for Him to come and help where you can’t help yourself.
It’s simple. But sometimes it doesn’t feel simple. It feels hard.
So what was it that drove these two people to respond to
Jesus the way they did? That leads me to the second question
2. How do you get that kind of faith? The kind of faith that
takes a step toward Jesus?
Pastor JD said this several weeks ago, “Faith’s conviction is
that God is good and seeking him is worth the effort. It starts
with knowing who God is and how he feels about you.” But
maybe you’re asking “how do you know that? How do you
know for sure “who God is and how he feels about you?” - You
know it by looking at Jesus. And Luke 8 gives us an incredible
picture of who God is and how He feels about us.
Listen, the central figure in Luke 8 is not Jairus or his daughter
or the woman with the chronic bleeding. It’s Jesus. He’s the
central character. Faith isn’t simply imitating the actions of
others, following a playbook to get what they got. Faith is
knowing what they knew that cause them to respond in faith.
I think there are 4 things that we can know about God from
this passage. 4 things that should stir faith in us. But I’m going
to say this -none of these is novel. And you may be very
tempted to say to yourself – this isn’t anything new, I know
this already. But listen to me carefully: If what you know
about God doesn’t stir up faith in you, then you don’t really
know God as He is.
FOUR TRUTHS ABOUT GOD THAT FUEL OUR FAITH
1. He is the all-powerful God
Just think about what happens here. This woman, chronically
sick for 12 years, touches the fringe of Jesus’ garment and in
an instant she is completely healed. The blood flow stopped.
For 12 years, she had not known a moment when she didn’t
feel the effect of her sickness. But in a flash, with just a touch,
it was all over. Bleeding stopped. Pain gone. Healed.
In verse 46, when it says that power went out from him – the
word for power there is dunamis. It’s the root from which we
get our word dynamite. Explosive, dynamic power, mighty
miracle-working power. It’s not an external source of power
that Jesus taps into, it’s his power coming from inside of him.
He is literally full of power.
Earlier in this same chapter, Jesus rebukes the wind and the
waves and calms a violent storm. Shortly after that, He
delivers a man who is possessed by a legion of demons. Then
he heals this woman. And raises Jairus’s daughter from the
dead. In those four encounters we see Jesus demonstrate his
power over creation, over the forces of evil, over sickness and
over death. That’s incredibly significant, because He alone has
power over everything. There is no one, no other god with
that kind of power. We have this testimony to assure us
that there is absolutely nothing in our lives outside the scope
of his power. Nothing. His arm is not too short that it cannot
save. Nothing is impossible for him. So when you start to feel
overwhelmed by your circumstances, stop looking at your
need, obsessing about the details of your circumstance – look
at Jesus and his incomparably great power for us who believe.
He is the only all-powerful God.
But you also need to know that He is a compassionate Father.
2. He is our Compassionate Father
When you and I look at the details of this story, the
compassion of God is written all over it. Jesus could have
simply spoken a word and this man’s daughter would have
lived (he did that on another occasion). But Jesus went with
Jairus, he walked with this distraught dad. Jesus entered into
this frightened father’s pain and grief. We shouldn’t be
surprised by that and we can’t afford to miss it or minimize it.
He is near the brokenhearted, his heart is for those who are
hurting, …as a Father has compassion on his children so the
Lord has compassion on those who fear him. Even in the valley
of the shadow of death, He is with us. You and I need to look
at his compassion, gaze on it, examine it and believe it.
I do want you to see a contrast here in the characters that
highlights something very important about God’s compassion.
Jairus is called by his name, we know who he is and what he
does. He’s a religious man, an insider. He’s important and
influential. It seems reasonable that Jesus would help him. But
the woman is only identified by her ailment. We know nothing
of her family or her occupation. We’re never told her name. In
the culture of her day, she was a nobody. She wasn’t worthy
to be noticed. Yet Jesus delays his trek to Jairus’ house to
acknowledge her and her need. His tenderness toward this
woman is unmistakable. He stops. He calls for her to come out
of hiding. And confers on her the identity of one who is
precious and known and loved. He called her “Daughter.”
This morning, some of y’all are right where this woman was.
You feel cut off from the love of God. Maybe it’s something
from your past or a tough situation you’re in today. A past sin
– you’ve confessed and repented but you just can’t get away
from the overwhelming sense of failure and you’ve been
marked by that. Maybe it’s not your sin but what somebody
else did to you. It could be an unanswered prayer. I don’t
know what it is, but you’ve taken that mean that you’ve been
rejected by God, forgotten, abandoned. And you need to hear
the Father call out to you this morning son, daughter, loved,
chosen, cherished, precious. He has not forgotten you or
abandoned you. His Word is absolutely true - Nothing can
separate you from the love that He has for you in Christ Jesus
who died for you even while you were still a sinner.
Looking at Jesus, we see that He is the all-powerful God, our
compassionate Father, and…
Our God is the all-powerful God, our compassionate Father,
the Sovereign Lord and…
3. He is a merciful Savior Look back at verse 43
43 And there was a woman who had had a discharge of blood
for twelve years, and though she had spent all her living on
physicians, she could not be healed by anyone.
I told you earlier that we would consider the implication of
this woman’s sickness because it helps us understand
something very important about the nature of God.
This woman isn’t just sick – her sickness has caused her to be
an outcast – the scripture says that her condition “a discharge
or flow of blood” makes her unclean. Leviticus 15:25 says
When a woman has a discharge of blood for many days... she
will be unclean as long as she has the discharge” Unclean, we
don’t really have a category for this in our culture. It was more
than just a matter of hygiene. It had social and religious
implications. It meant that anyone or anything she touched
would be considered unclean. This brought isolation. She
couldn’t be around family or friends for fear of making them
unclean. For 12 years, no one had dared to touch her or risk
being touched by her. She hadn’t been able sleep with her
husband, or hold her kids. She is alone, forsaken, outcast. All
her relationships have been affected, even her relationship to
God and his people. She was forbidden to enter the presence
of God, to gather with His people for worship. But Jesus does
away with all of that.
This blows me away – Jesus let her touch him, He even called
attention to the fact that she had touched him, He essentially
announced it - even though that would have made him
ceremonially unclean. The implication is that Jesus would not
be able to enter the presence of God or interact with the
people of God until He had been through the process of ritual
cleansing. Yet Jesus was willing to take her uncleanness into
Himself in order to grant healing. Who does that? Only a
merciful God.
48 And he said to her, “Daughter, your faith has made you
well; go in peace.”
Literally, your faith as saved you. Go live in peace. No more
anxiety and fear thinking that you have been abandoned by
God. You have been restored. She received physical healing
and salvation from her sin by reaching out in faith.
This is what the Gospel tells us, we are save by grace through
faith (Ephesians 2:8) It’s a gift, just like this woman’s healing,
that comes to us when we reach out in faith to the One who
was willing to take our sin, our uncleanness into Himself, so
that we might be healed and restored to the Father.
God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him
we might become the righteousness of God. 2 Corinthians
5:21 NIV
For some of you this morning, this is what you need to hear.
Your sin has separated you from God. And the only way for
you to be restored to life and at peace with God is by faith in
Jesus.
We want to encourage you, invite you to put your trust in
Jesus today. He’s merciful and ready to receive you.
There’s just one more thing I want you to see this morning.
4. He is the Sovereign Lord
There’s another detail that I think is significant. It’s the
number 12. For the woman, it’s 12 long years of suffering and
pain. But for Jairus’ daughter, she’s only 12 years old. Such a
short life. Why would God allow this? Jesus could have come
sooner and saved both of them from so much suffering. So
why didn’t he?
Honestly, I don’t know. But it’s pretty clear that his delay, in
both cases, gave an opportunity for Jesus to reveal His heart
and show them his great power. Yes, He could have worked
differently, He could have prevented their trouble, but they
would have missed the chance to really know him. Isn’t that
the same with us?
Listen to me. In every trial, every trouble we face, is the
opportunity for us to know God in a way that we would not
otherwise know Him. Just some things you can’t know until
you need them. Listen, there’s been a lot in my life that I
don’t like, I don’t understand. But I have to trust God. That’s
why we have the wisdom of Proverbs 3:5-6 “Trust in the Lord
with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding.
In all your ways acknowledge Him (know Him) and He will
make your paths straight.” When we trust Him, His heart, His
wisom and His goodness, then He will lead us in a straight
path right into His arms.
As we wrap up this morning, I want to ask you: Where in your
life do you need to reach out in faith and touch Jesus? Where
do you need to fall at the feet of Jesus and plead for him to
come and restore life to dead places. Can you look at Jesus
this morning and believe His power and compassion and
mercy are for you?
He's here this morning, arms wide open, ready to respond to
every reach of faith, every cry for help. I’m not telling you that
everyone receives healing. Not every prayer of faith gets a yes.
George Mueller – wife dying
Psalm 84:11 For the Lord God is a sun and shield; The Lord bestows
favor and honor; no good thing does he withhold
from those whose walk is blameless.
At the end of the day, true faith in Jesus isn’t faith in an
outcome, it’s faith in a person – our Savior Jesus Christ. He is
powerful and compassionate and merciful. He’s the same
yesterday, today and forever. Would you join me and let’s call
on Him, cry out to Him, and believe that He is faithful?
