06 Who Touched Me? (Mark 5:21-34)

SPEAKER_01: So we are going through the Gospel of Mark and we're stopping at passages where Jesus asked a question. And I thought since we were halfway through, I'd take a few minutes to review what we've seen so far. The first week we looked at the question, what's easiest to say? Your sins are forgiven, or take up your mat and walk. And that question Jesus asked to the Pharisees. And the Pharisees were scandalized that he had told the paralytic the paralyzed man that his sins were forgiven. And it's actually the second question he asks in that section. The first one was also addressed to the Pharisees. He said, Why are you thinking these things? And the point of that was he was trying to get the Pharisees to think about who they're serving. And the question was, What kind of a God do you serve? Do you serve one who delights in forgiveness or a God who withholds it? Do you think that God is lavish in his grace and his mercy and his compassion, or do you think you have to kind of earn it and prove your worth and claw your way to the little crumb of forgiveness? And he wanted the Pharisees to see, of course, it's the former that God delights in forgiveness and compassion. The second question, or the second week, we looked at the question, what is lawful to do on the Sabbath to do good or to do evil? And that was also addressed to the Pharisees. They were watching Jesus to see if he would heal the man with the withered hand. And the interesting thing about that question is it's a question we would expect even our youngest children to be able to answer. Would God prefer you do good or would God prefer you do evil? And they wouldn't even have to think about it. And yet the Pharisees refused to answer because they have built up this, the idea of the Sabbath, into this incredible burden of figuring out exactly what work is and what you can and can't do. And of course, they kept themselves in a position of higher authority by saying they had it right, everybody else had it wrong. So he was trying to point out to them that the Sabbath is a rest that is granted to us by God. It's not a rest we earn, but it's it's another part of the gift of God. Okay, the third week we looked at why are you so afraid? And that was addressed to the disciples. They were, this is the story of them in the boat in the middle of the night, they're crossing, and the storm comes up, and in their panic, they begin to doubt that maybe Jesus is not who he says he is, or maybe he doesn't love them anymore and he's going to let them drown in the storm. And after they wake him up, he calms the storm and then says, Why are you still afraid? Do you still have do you have so little faith? And he is pointing out to them the problem is not that Jesus is not who he said he is. The problem is not that he doesn't love them enough, the problem is they're not believing the evidence they have in in front of them. So they have enough evidence to know he's the Messiah, and they just need to trust in that. Last week then we looked at the question, what is your name? And this is addressed to the man who was being tormented by the Legion of Demons. It was asked of the demons, but it was asked in the presence of the disciples. And again, I think Jesus was trying to point out, who are you? Who is your father? When all I'm said and done, what is your character? And he's pointing out that the evil, the dem the demons inside the man were a visible, tangible representation of the evil that is in all of us, and that we are all prisoners of our sinfulness, the way this man was a prisoner of the demon, and that that is our real enemy, and that is the enemy Jesus came to defeat. So if you put all those together as you go through the Gospel of Mark, what you can see is the evidence is mounting that Jesus is the Messiah, that he is the one with the authority to forgive sins. We've seen him prove that authority with healings, we've seen him heal on the Sabbath, we've seen him come this overwhelming external storm, then an overwhelming internal storm, and today we're going to see him solve another overwhelming need. This is more of an isolated outcast. And I of all the stories we looked at, this is one of my favorites. It might might be my most favorite. And I think it's my favorite because it surprised me the most. When I started studying it, I thought, what is there to say about this? There, I mean, he heals her. Okay, I got it. Um and I it was like, yeah, I've been there, done that, read that story. And I thought, what am I ever going to say about this? But the more I studied it, the more it surprised me with how much is there is to learn from this woman. So I hope you are as at the end of this year as excited as I am about this. So let's look at Mark chapter 5. We're gonna read 21 through 34. And next week we're gonna come back to this same section and look at the story of Darius and his daughter. But it's this one comes in the middle of it. I just decided that two shorter talks was better than one really long talk, so I thought we'd break that one up. So next week won't be quite as long, but I thought it was too much to try to handle in one day. All right, so let's look at Mark chapter 5, verse 21. When Jesus had again crossed over by boat to the other side of the lake, a large crowd gathered around him while he was by the lake. Then one of the synagogue rulers named Jarius came there. Seeing Jesus, he fell at his feet and pleaded earnestly with him. My little daughter is dying. Please come and put your hands on her so that she will be healed and live. So Jesus went with him. A large crowd followed and pressed around him, and a woman was there who had been subject to bleeding for twelve years. She had suffered a great deal under the care of many doctors and had spent all she had, yet instead of getting better, she grew worse. When she heard about Jesus, she came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak, because she thought if I just touch his clothes I will be healed. Immediately her bleeding stopped, and she felt in her body that she was freed from her suffering. At once Jesus realized the power had gone out from him. He turned around in the crowd and asked, Who touched my clothes? You see the people crowding against you, his disciples answered, and yet you asked who touched me? But Jesus kept looking around to see who had done it. Then the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came and fell at his feet, and trembling with fear, told him the whole truth. He said to her, Daughter, your faith has healed you. Go in peace and be freed from your suffering. Now let me try to fill in a little of the gaps so we understand what's going on in the story. The background for this is in Leviticus. So keep your finger and mark. Turn back to Leviticus chapter 15, because that's where we get the laws that are that are affecting this woman. So, Leviticus 15, I'm going to read you verses 25 through 28. Now, if a woman has a discharge of her blood many days, not at the period of her menstrual impurity, or she has a discharge beyond that period all the days of her impure discharge, she shall continue as though in her menstrual impurity. She is unclean. Any bed on which she lies all the days of her discharge shall be to her like her bed at menstruation, and everything on which she sits shall be unclean, like her uncleanliness at the at that time. Likewise, whoever touches them shall be unclean, and shall wash his clothes and bathe in water, and be unclean until evening. When she becomes clean from her discharge, she shall count off for herself seven days, and afterwards she shall be clean. So this is the problem for the woman in our story. She is unclean because essentially she has a period that doesn't end, and she has lived this way for twelve years. And because of the Levitical laws to which she was subject as a Jew living among Jews, it had a whole lot of implications and repercussions beyond just the medical problems. Now, there are lots of laws about what makes you clean and unclean in the Old Testament, and I'm not going to explain them. It's a good thing, because I don't understand them all. But I do want to make a couple of observations about them. Leviticus 15, in fact, much of Leviticus is a discussion about the laws of cleanliness, and we are given lots of things that can make you unclean. Among them are shellfish, pork, various insects are unclean, and if you touch them, you're unclean. A man's nocturnal omissions, if you touch a dead body, various types of skin conditions made you unclean, or if you had mold in the plaster of your house, the high priest, if his clothing was torn, or he had a broken bone, he was unclean. So there's this long list of things in the Old Testament that make you unclean. Touching andor eating them or experiencing them or being near them could make you unclean. So what I want you to see is the laws of uncleanliness apply equally to men and women. This, the woman is not singled out, or women in general are not singled out as unclean just because they have periods. So I'm going to start reading at 15, verse 1. Leviticus. Then the Lord said to Moses and Aaron, speak to the Israelites and say to them, When any man has a bodily discharge, the discharge is unclean. Whether it continues flowing from his body or is blocked, it will make him unclean. This is how his discharge will bring about uncleanness. Now notice how similar these are to the ones I just read. Any bed the man with a discharge lies on will be unclean, and anything he sits on will be unclean. Anyone who touches his bed must wash his clothes and bathe with water, and he will be unclean until evening. Whoever sits on anything the man with the discharge sat on must wash his clothes and bathe with water, and he will be unclean till evening. Whoever touches the man who has a discharge must wash his clothes and bathe with water, and he shall be unclean until evening. If the man with a discharge spits on someone who is clean, that person must wash his clothes and bathe with water, and he will be unclean until evening. Everything the man sits on when riding will be unclean, and whoever touches any of these things that were under him will be unclean till evening. Whoever picks up those things must wash his clothes and bathe with water, and he will be unclean till evening. Anyone the man with a discharge touches without rinsing his hands with water must wash his clothes and bathe with water and he will be unclean. A clay pot that the man touches must be broken, and any wooden article is to be rinsed with water. When a man is cleansed from his discharge, he is to count off seven days for his ceremonial cleansing. He must wash his clothes and bathe himself with fresh water, and he will be clean. On the eighth day he must take two doves or two young pigeons and come before the Lord to the entrance of the tent of meeting and give them to the priest. The priest is to sacrifice them, the one for a sin offering and the other for a burnt offering, and this way he will make atonement before the Lord because of the man for the man because of his discharge. So you notice the rules are essentially the same. If anything, they're a bit more strict for the men because we don't see the details about breaking the clay pots and the wooden um rinsing wooden articles or spitting, those are not repeated in the section for women. So the first thing to note is the rules cross gender lines. God does not single out women. And if you think about how this was practiced, in some ways it was a break. Because once a month for seven days, a woman could not do anything. Couldn't cook, it would be unclean. Couldn't clean the house, it would make it unclean. She, I mean, it was like a vacation in some ways. Every every once a month. I'm thinking, maybe you ought to go back to some of this. This could have some positive effects. But um I don't know that they how they put this all in practice, but it must have been um difficult anyway. But the first thing to realize is women are not treated differently or unfairly just because they have um periods. The second thing I think to why why would God give all these laws? I think part of it is to teach us a spiritual reality. And I don't understand all the profundity of the laws, but I bet um but I bet if I really did or we really found someone who had, there's a lot to learn from them. I think the tip of the iceberg is that we don't learn very well uh when we look at a spiritual concept, we need a physical or uh tangible way to learn it. And so God often gives us an external physical way to learn an invisible spiritual reality. For example, communion. It's probably the one we're most familiar with. It's a physical thing that we do to teach us a spiritual lesson, to help us focus on the cross of Christ, and at least for Protestants, ingesting the bread and the wine is to remind you of what Christ did for you. So it's a physical thing that we do to teach us a spiritual ra reality. And I think the laws of cleanliness were the same thing. They were to teach us something about the world and about maybe joy or sorrow or hope or mourning. And I think it was to show us how pervasive sin is. I mean when you read th those laws, the first thing that strikes you is, oh my gosh, how can anyone possibly ever do that? And I think part of what we're supposed to learn is sin is like that. We think, oh, it was just a little sin. But one sin infects the whole body. I mean, sin is sin. And uh God's standard is perfect or not. You know, there's no, well, I'm I'm 99.9% clean. Doesn't cut it. You gotta be a hundred percent. And I think part of the laws were to teach us how fallen we are or how unclean we are. There's probably more to it than that, but I think that's at least the tip of the iceberg. That following all those rules should have driven the Israelites to say, I can't possibly be clean left to myself. There's got to be a better way. And of course there is. There's the gospel. Now, the laws for this woman fell really harshly. They would have kept her socially isolated for twelve weeks twelve years. And if you think about what her life must have been like, it must have been a nightmare of the worst sort because no one could touch her. No one I mean, for twelve years, no hug, no touch, no one could touch the things she touched. How could they even bring her a bowl of soup? They couldn't take the bowl back after she had touched it. No one could sit on a chair that she had sat in, no one could wash her bed for her. Uh so all of that must have been incredibly difficult for her. And I'm sure, I I mean, I don't know, but I suspect she faced her share of insensitive kind of people who made a bad situation worse with their thoughtless comments. Um, not to mention the treatment she probably received from her the doctors of her day. Uh it it just the whole thing must have been an incredible test of her faith. And I suspect she couldn't have gone through that without struggling with God, and at least asking, why me, God? Why don't you answer this prayer? Why am I forced to be isolated? She would have been cut off from her family, cut off from her friends, she couldn't have gone to the temple for public worship. Um, and it went on and on and on. Um and as her disease and her illness progressed, she would have gotten weaker every day. And I think, I mean, she walked a really hard road, and I think like the demoniac in the last story, we're supposed to see this is another extreme. She is really facing a difficult situation. And I can't, I mean, I get sick for a day, and I think, I gotta start complaining. I can't imagine, you know, twelve years of being of of struggling with this. Okay, let's go back to the passage in Mark. We're done with Leviticus. So go back to Mark 5. Uh, and notice it starts when Jesus had again crossed over by boat to the other side of the lake. So this picks up immediately from where we were last week. He had when he heals the um, you remember we saw Jesus drive the legion of demons out of the man and send them into the pigs, and the pigs proceeded to drown themselves in the lake, and the townspeople come and they're terrified of Jesus, and they ask him to leave, and he does, and he gets back in the boat and he crosses back to where he had been at the beginning of the day. So he's now returned back to the other side of the lake, and he founds a crowd there waiting for him. And there are two people in the crowd seeking his help. The first is Jarius, who was an important leader. The term synagogue official that's used to describe him was the person who was in charge of the building, basically, the supervision of the synagogue and the arrangements for the services. And this was typically a man of very high status and position. So his daughter is dying, and he's so desperate he seeks Jesus' help, and apparently there's no um there's no discussion. Jesus just starts taking off. Um, there's no response. So, like an ambulance on a rescue mission, Jesus takes off, and then there's an interruption in that story, and it's the story of our our woman. There's a couple of issues in the translation that I want to point out to you. They're not really issues, they're just things I think are obscure. I think there's a better way. Uh if you have the New American Standard, I think it's a little better translation here than the NIV. The first one is in verse 30. And immediately Jesus, perceiving in himself that the power proceeding from him had gone forth, turned around in the crowd and said, Who touched my garments? That immediately, or it's sometimes translated at once, refers to the turning around. It's immediately he turned. It is not immediately he perceived. And that I think is what's confusing. The New American Standard puts comma is in, so immediately Jesus, comma, perceiving the power had gone up forth, comma, turned around. So the picture is immediately he turns. It's not immediately he knew the power had gone out from him. I think the reason I'm quibbling with that, you may say, okay, what's the big deal? Is the NIV at least opens the door to the fact that he didn't know that he had healed her, that this was either unconscious or unwilled, and that he wasn't aware about it until the power until the healing was over. I don't think that's the case. I don't think that whoever touched him would be healed. There was no magical uh thing about his robe or his clothes that they don't have any power apart from God's will. And I think Jesus immediately turns to the woman because he wants to teach her something, and that's what we're going to talk about today. So I think he knew, I think he knew before she even approached him that it was going to happen. This was all part of his plan. The other one is in verse 32. He looked around to see the woman who had done this. The NIV translates that he kept looking around, and again it kind of suggests that he doesn't know who touched him, and it suggests he's kind of doing, you know, one of these looking around trying to find her. I think the idea is he kept looking at her. So he say Libby was a woman in the crowd, he turns immediately to her and he keeps looking. He's not searching, he's making eye contact, and he's essentially caught her red-handed. So it's he keeps looking at her when he asks the question. And in fact, Luke adds, when the woman saw that she had not escaped notice into that, he makes it more clear that Jesus is looking right at her and she knows she's been caught. So the idea is you've got this scene where he's in a crowd and everyone's pressing against him and there's jostling and slipping. And the idea is she could have like worked her way through the crowd and touched him and then melted back into the crowd again, and maybe that's what she's hoping for, but she can't because he turns immediately and makes eye contact with her, and she knows she's been caught. And I think he does that because she has been healed physically, but he wants to give her spiritual healing, and that's of greater importance. So he's going to give her more than she initially thought to ask for. Okay, there's one other issue, and that's in verse 34. When he says, Daughter, your faith has healed you. Go in peace and be freed from your suffering. I think the New American Standard says, Daughter, your faith has made you well. That word healed or made you well, and it appears both in verse 28 and in verse 34, is the Greek word for being saved. And it is quite frequently used in a medical sense of ordinarily, just ordinary medical healing. It is also the word that is used for salvation when you are healed of your sins. So it can be used of getting over the flu, getting over a broken bone, but it is also quite often the word for eternal salvation. You have been healed, you have been healed in your soul. So everything we mean by saving faith. And the question is, in verse 34, is he saying, Your faith has saved you, or is he saying, your faith has healed you physically? And you have to decide by the context and the situation. And some translators go one way and some translators go other. And then and that's the big question. Clearly in verse 28, when it says she was healed, that's a physical healing. The question is in verse 34, is he saying, daughter, your faith has healed you, or something more profound, daughter, your faith has saved you? My view, which I'm going to explain why in a minute, is that he's saying the latter, that he is saying she has been saved. Uh spiritually and not just physically. Because, well, we're going to get to that. I think he knew at this point that her physical problem had already been dealt with, but he wanted to heal her spiritually and not just physically. Okay, so those are the the three little issues I wanted to point out in the in the translation. Now, let me describe a little bit more what she was going through. Mark gives us a pretty good bit of detail about her struggle. First of all, her condition must have been debilitating. She must certainly have been anemic. I mean, you can't have an unending bleeding for that long and not become anemic. So she would have been weakened. She is growing older, she is growing sicker, and he tells us that all the doctors that she appealed to for help didn't help her. In fact, she was getting worse. And probably the medical treatment of the day was not all that helpful. There's a book by Alfred Aderschim. He was an Orthodox Jew who became a Christian, and he wrote a very helpful book called The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah. It was written, I think, in the 1800s. But he fills in a lot of the con of the Jewish ideas and backgrounds. And he writes on this passage, on one leaf of the Talmud, which was the Talmud was an ancient commentary on the Old Testament. So on one leaf of the Talmud, in this case Leviticus, not less than eleven different remedies are proposed for this problem of nonstop menstruation, of which at most only six can possibly regard it as astringence or tonic, and the rest are merely the outcome of superstition to which resort is had in the absence of knowledge. So the other kinds of remedies she would have been offered according to him are the ashes of an ostrich egg carried in the summer in a linen cloth and in the winter in a cotton rag, or carrying in your pocket barley corn, which has been found in the dung of a white uh she ass. So very helpful, right? So and she's paying money for this. So and she right, and she's a those two things would again add to her uncleanness, you're right. So she um is being offered help that is probably not helpful at all and is just making her um taking her money and doing no good. And I think that the effect of this must have been emotionally devastating as well. She must have been desperate. I mean, if she's isolated from her friends and family and um cut off from public worship, uh the fear of the future must have been out amazing to her. What would she have think except that she is going to get older and older and poorer and poorer? And what does she have to look forward to but dying alone, untouched, unwanted, and destitute? I mean, that's what the future must have looked like to her. And I think Mark gives us all the details of his of her story to impress upon us how heartbreakingly difficult this is. So, like the demon in the last scene, she is really at the extreme. She's cut off, she's isolated and alone, and her struggle is not the external violence struggle that we saw with the demoniac, but she is no less an outcast. So, why does he point all that out to us? I think at least part of it is that if Jesus can help these people, he can help us. I mean, if he can deal with these extremes, we saw him deal with the stormy weather on the Sea of Galilee, we saw him heal this man who's possessed by a legion of demons, and now here's this woman with this physical, debilitating, unsolvable problem that's dragged her down for twelve years, then what about me? Those were no problem for him. So of course he could heal the problems of my heart, he could heal the brokenness in my life, you know, the family upheaval or the financial problem or a scrape with the law or career setback or I don't know, a broken family relationship, or something I want that's denied me. I think what Mark is building here is Jesus has faced every extreme and easily solves them. They're no problem. So of course he can solve the problems that that are in our lives. One more little comment on the background. Notice too that Jesus stops his mission to help her. So here he is on a like 9-1-1 emergency, life or death, mission to save the life of a child of one of the important male members of the community, and along comes this nobody, this poor woman with no name that we're given, no social standing that we know of. She's an outcast, she's unclean, and he stops and helps her. Um, and I think that's significant. So, with all that in mind, let me look at this story then from three points of view. We're going to look at it from the woman's point of view, then the disciples' point of view, and then Jesus' point of view, and figure out what each one was to learn and what Jesus was trying to teach. So, first let's talk about the woman's point of view. Um realize that she is taking a big risk. Presumably she's heard Jesus teach, or she's known others who have heard him, and she's heard about the healings, and she decides that she's going to make one more attempt to get a resolution, and she's going to try to get him to heal her. So you could imagine maybe she was off in the distance and the crowds are rushing to get to Jarius's house, and she thinks, here's my chance, I can get into the crowd and find a crack here and there and get to Jesus. Now, this is a big risk because she is unclean. She should not be in the crowd at all. So if she goes into the crowd and, you know, she bumps up against Sheila, and then Sheila bumps against Michelle, and so you know, see how it would spread through the cloud. She's rubbing shoulders with everybody, and if she touches them and then they touch somebody else, then the whole crowd's going to become unclean. So they could pick up stones and stone her. This is not behavior she should be doing. There's at least twelve or thirteen rules she is breaking by going into the crowd. The other thing is she most certainly should not approach an important rabbi who's on an errand for an important man in the community. I mean, how dare she? She is a nobody. And she is breaking all these rules, and then she's going and she's interrupting an important teacher on an emergency mission. I mean, that's that's that is not something she should do. And if that's not enough, he's a single man. And women in those days just didn't go up and start touching single men. I presume that she was single as well, because having been unclean that long, uh, no one could live with her. So if she had a husband, I suspect that he is no longer on the scene, and that's part of the reason she's financially destitute. So for a single woman to go up and approach a single man like that and touch him is just not done. So she is taking a big risk. She, if the crowd finds out what she has done, or if Jesus fails to heal her, she could be stoned for this. She could be uh, you know, driven out of town or at the at the best. So notice though, she goes up, she touches him, she's received healing, and the story doesn't end there. Because she hasn't received everything God wants her to have. He wants her to be spiritually healed, not just physically healed. So if the story had ended there, what might she have concluded? And why wouldn't, and why doesn't the story end there so that she doesn't conclude these things? The first wrong assumption she might have made is that God seeks, that she has to seek God, when in fact God's the one that seeks us. So she could have thought that she had to take the initiative, you know, to reach out this hand, to touch Jesus' robe, to kind of fight her way for a little bit of crumb of blessing, and that's all she gets. But that's not the story of the gospel. The story of the gospel is God seeks us. God turns around like the shepherd who's got nine a hundred sheep and one is lost, and he eagerly goes in searching for that one lost sheep. That's the story of the gospel. So I think Jesus wants to teach her that God will come to her. She doesn't have to fight her way to God and hope that he might deign to bless her. The other problem she might have concluded is she might have become superstitious and thought, you know, maybe it was just his robe that healed me, you know, like, ooh, the miracle of the cloth or something, and that maybe that had magic power quite apart from who um who was wearing it. And I don't think he wants her to conclude that. It's touching him is not what made her well. He tells her it was faith. And as we've seen, physical touch is not required for healing. Jesus has healed almost every person to this point without actually physically touching them. So I think he wants her to learn that it is not that because she touched his robe, it is because he is a God of compassion and mercy and forgiveness. And most important, I think he wants her to learn that her healing is incomplete. Physical healing is only part of what God wanted her to have. She had spent twelve years isolated from God and from the community. And if he had left her at that, how would anybody know she was clean? How would the crowd know she was clean? She can't exactly show them, you know, or kind of really tell them. So when he makes her healing public and declares her clean, he restores her to the community so that she is no longer an outcast. And I think that's part of what he wants to give her is her place back in the community and a relationship with him. Now, what does that mean for you and me? Here's I think the application point for that. How many of you have ever prayed something like, God, if you just give me this one thing, I'll never ask you for anything again? You know? If you just get me out of this one jam or meet me at this one point or resolve this situation, then I'll leave you alone. I'll never I'll never ask for anything else. That prayer sounds really righteous, but it's not. And that is the situation the woman could have been left at. You just give me this one physical healing and I'll leave you alone. But God doesn't want that. God doesn't want hit and run disciples. He wants people who come to him every day and every night in the good times and the bad times, as a heavenly father, falling at his feet and having a relationship with him. He doesn't want um, you know, someone to touch his robe and wants to run away. He wants a child who trusts him and loves him and comes in the joyous times and the sorrow and the quiet. I mean, why would God be pleased with us asking for one thing and never asking again? The point is we have a father, a loving father, who wants to love and bless us and have a relationship with him. So he doesn't want her to touch his robe and w run away. He wants her to come to know him and love him. Okay, so that's the woman's point of view. Let's talk about the disciples. Um, as usual, they don't seem to know what's going on, and they tell Jesus he doesn't know what's going on either. So now, to be fair, you you don't know how big the crowd was. It could have been difficult to tell what was going on. She slipped through the crowd, and you know, in the confusion they might have missed her. Um, but they have the audacity to kind of tell Jesus, okay, look, be sensible. Um, go on, get on with the meeting the needs of this important man. They're, you know, they kind of miss the interaction with the woman. They make the assumption they know everything, they know what's going on, and here's what Jesus' priorities are and what he needs to do, and yet they are the ones who's missing the point. So the application point, I think, for that for us is how often do we assume we know exactly what God is doing? You know, He is working this way in my life for these things, and I'm sure this is the ministry he wants me to have. And this person that keeps knocking at my door, that that's not it. You know, I mean, we often think that we know everything, that God's gonna work in this nice orderly fashion, and that um these are the kind of people he wants us to m wants me to minister to, or this is the job he wants me to do, and we miss the people that maybe don't fit our expectations, or don't look like they're kind of maybe they don't look like people in need, or maybe they look like they're beyond hope, and then sometimes they're the ones that Jesus wants us to be involved with. So I think the application from the disciples is um be willing to to look around and see that maybe God's doing something entirely different than what I think he's doing. Okay, and then lastly, let's look at this from Jesus' point of view, and this is probably the most important. I think it's significant that he stops this urgent errand to uh deal with this this woman. Now remember, there's a girl dying. There's a this is an important man in the community tugging at his sleeve and saying, Come quickly. The disciples have kind of ridiculed him for stopping, and yet he knows this woman needs him and needs his help. And I think what we can learn from him is that every honest cry receives God's full attention. There's no the high status man does not give in preference over this outcast woman. There's no social standing in the kingdom of God. All of us are sinners and need, and he will respond to all of us. Everyone who cries out to him will get his full attention. So he seeks the woman, but he doesn't force her to come to him. He c when he turns around and he looks right at her and he says, Who touched me? He's inviting her to open up. He's inviting her to come and do exactly what she does, fall at his feet and tell him the whole story. So he doesn't insist, he doesn't force her, or he doesn't command her to come to him, he invites her to come. And I think that's his loving way of seeking her. He isn't going to insist she say what happened, but he gives her the chance and to know him face to face. And I think the story I referenced earlier of, you know, the story of the hundred sheep. This is the shepherd who's on a m a mission, and yet one sheep is lost, and he will stop to find her. So she reaches out for healing and he turns around and offers her salvation. I think that is what this is one of the reasons I think that I would translate verse 34 as she has been saved, is that she took the initiative to approach him for physical healing, but he takes the initiative with her to offer her salvation. Uh, and she needs to know that she's not pursuing an indifferent messiah, she's pursuing a loving and compassionate one. So he doesn't let her melt back into the crowd with and no one ever knows that she was healed or clean. He wants her to become part of the community so that others can now touch her and and befriend her, um, and he makes her healing public so that everyone will know that. She is healed, she's cleaned, she's forgiven, and she's restored to the community. Because I think he knows she needs more than physical healing. She must have had a broken heart. She must have had some bitterness or frustration or questions or confusions or even just dark memories of the last twelve years. And so he invites her to come, and I think that is the real act of faith. When she comes and she falls at his feet and she tells out her whole story, that's the act of faith. She is, and think about it, her story had to be embarrassing, it had to be difficult. She's talking about things you don't really talk about in public. I mean, no one wants to talk about menstrual problems in a public crowd to a man with all these other people around. And she must have had the story of rejection, of medical problems, personal issues, and she pours it all out at his feet, and she doesn't know. Is he going to scold her? Is he going to love her? Is the crowd going to start to stone her? Because now they will realize she was unclean when she came into it. Um, so that's the act of faith, of falling at his feet and saying, Here's my story, I trust you. Um heal me. And think about where does Mark get his details? He must it must have been from her account. And I wonder how long it took for her to tell the story. It must have been I don't know, who knows, minutes or m hours, I don't know. It was a very difficult thing to do. So she sought the miracle of healing, but when she falls at her feet, she's looking for mercy. And I think that it's her faith that allowed her to say, I trust you enough to tell you this whole thing and that you're going to love me and not reject me for what I've done. And he responds to that and says, Your faith, I think, has saved you. And he uses this term daughter, which is a compassionate term that you would use of a family member. It's it's in a term of endearment and and acceptance, and says, You are no longer an outcast, you are whole, you are clean, you are forgiven, you are part of a family. So now this woman who had no one is a daughter and a and a beloved child. And it doesn't say, but I just have this picture in my mind that he took her by the hand and lifted her up, you know. But I just think that would have been so poetic of him touching her for the first time in twelve years, bringing her to her feet, maybe even gave her a hug. I don't know. Maybe they didn't probably hug in public in those days, but but it doesn't say that in the text, but in my mind when I kind of play it out of the movie, I just kind of hope he did. I just think that would have been so poetic for her to be touched in love and compassion. So she is healed, she's clean, she's saved, and and she is now a daughter of the kingdom. She gets more than physical healing, she gets salvation. So when Jesus asks, you know, who touched me? That's he's still asking it to us. Um there are probably some of you today who maybe you're hit-and-run disciples, you know, you touch Jesus' robe and you run away. Or you maybe ask him for help in a time of crisis, but you forget about him the rest of the the rest of your life, and you think, maybe I have to do this on my own, and I can only ask him, you know, when life gets hard. And you can, you can touch his robe and run away, but he has more to offer than that. We have a Lord who is not impressed with the give me one thing and I'll never bother you again. He wants to bless us. He wants to bless you, he wants to give you more than this one thing. He can do more than solve the problems of the here and now, the rifts in our relationship, our finances, our health. Instead, he wants a relationship. He wants our whole heart, he wants to hear the whole story, all the brokenness and the pain and the frustration and the bitterness, and he wants to heal the whole story. So uh God is seeking you. You may not know it yet, but he is there waiting if you fall at his feet. And it may be a scary question to respond to, but it's far worse to fail the to answer, especially when he's looking at you, waiting to bless you. Oh, let me stop there. I wanted to stop earlier. So we'll still have some time for questions, though. Let me pray. Father, I just thank you that you are a God who loves us and that you want to give us more than just the little needs that we know of in our lives, that you want to heal the whole story, to heal the brokenness, the sin that ru that is th in us through and through, to heal the frustration, the years, and bitterness. And I just pray that you would be working this truth into our hearts, teaching us to come and fall at your feet, not only in the crisis times and the hard times, but morning by morning and evening by evening.