Sermon Tone Analysis

*Intro* – A lady had dressed up in a genie costume for the office Halloween Party.

When she went to leave, her car would not start.

As she walked away, a colleague pulled up and asked what was wrong.

She said her car stalled.

He said, “Well, just fold your arms -- and blink!”

If you remember I Dream of Genie you know what he meant.

Magic!

Triggered by an exaggerated blink!

That’s God to many people – magic!

That’s religion.

Blink, and God is obligated to do His thing?

God as a magic dispenser.

That’s the issue Jesus addresses in our text.

Luke is continuing to show Jesus’ authority -- answers for skeptics.

Here we have 2 stories in 1. Jesus starts off in v. 40 toward the home of Jairus whose daughter is deathly ill.

But He gets interrupted and responds in a wonderful way to a woman with a great need.

*I.

An Insoluble Problem*

V. 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.”

There is no human cure for this woman.

She has tried everything.

What even she doesn’t know is that hers is a 2-fold issue.

*A.

Physically*

The physical problem is obvious.

She had a discharge of blood -- a persistent uterine hemorrhage.

The cause is unclear, but it was serious and over 12 years no one had been able to help.

Mark 5:26 adds that she: “ had suffered much under many physicians, and had spent all that she had, and was no better but rather grew worse.”

This dear woman had lost her health, her wealth, and her hope to this physical malady.

She had an insoluble physical problem.

*B.

Spiritually*

And it was deeper than physical.

According to Lev 15:19-30 she was ceremonially unclean, could not go to the temple or synagogue.

Anyone or anything she touched was also unclean.

This was not a moral issue; it was simply one of many means God used to teach that nothing short of perfection could come into God’s presence.

Applied to a woman’s monthly cycle.

But for this poor woman, the condition never ended.

For 12 years she had been ostracized, incapable of human contact, including a sexual relationship, by law.

Had she been married, she was probably divorced by now.

Num 5:1-3 required isolation, equivalent to leprosy for one in her condition: “The LORD spoke to Moses, saying, 2 “Command the people of Israel that they put out of the camp everyone who is leprous or has a discharge and everyone who is unclean through contact with the dead.

3 You shall put out both male and female, putting them outside the camp, that they may not defile their camp, in the midst of which I dwell.”

This woman lived with constant embarrassment, humiliation and isolation.

Normal life is impossible.

She is shut out from fellowship and religious life.

Worse yet, tradition of the Pharisees was brutal.

They taught that such a hemorrhage (the literal word used here) was the result of personal immorality.

This was false, not part of the Mosaic code, but it was the belief of the time.

So you can imagine the physical, emotional and spiritual strain of this outcast from decent society.

This depicts the spiritual state of everyone less than morally perfect.

Sin defiles and destroys.

Outside Christ we are like the man who moved to a retirement community in Florida.

His son called one day and asked about the age of the people who lived there.

Dad responded, “They are old.”

After a moment’s thought: “In fact, I would say that their average was deceased!”

That’s the average age of those outside Christ.

Deceased.

Those outside of Christ are as Paul describes “dead in trespasses and sins” (Eph 2:1).

Bad news!

But there is a solution.

It is the same as for this woman.

It is not a creed or an improved morality or a ritual.

It is the incredible, incomparable Person of Jesus Christ.

That’s where this woman found healing and so must we.

*II.

An Incomparable Person*

V. 44, “She came up behind him and touched the fringe of his garment, and immediately her discharge of blood ceased.”

Don’t you love the simplicity of the cleansing power of Jesus?

But that simplicity keeps many away.

They don’t believe it’s that easy.

But so it is.

This woman’s faith shows 2 wonderful characteristics of this incredible, inexplicable, incomparable Jesus.

*A.

His Healing Supremacy*

Note, she was fixated on touching a tassel, a reminder of Num 15:37-39: “The LORD said to Moses, 38 “Speak to the people of Israel, and tell them to make tassels on the corners of their garments throughout their generations, and to put a cord of blue on the tassel of each corner.

39 And it shall be a tassel for you to look at and remember all the commandments of the LORD, to do them, not to follow after your own heart and your own eyes, which you are inclined to whore after.”

We all have wandering hearts!

God He prescribes to Israel visual reminders of the need for holy living – the tassels.

Tassels were attached to the 4 corners of a square outer garment which was arranged so a couple of the tassels hung down the back.

The Pharisees wore large ones to show compliance.

This was the woman’s target as she came up behind Jesus.

She came from behind to avoid embarrassment.

She is not trying to steal a healing, but to guard her privacy.

As a last resort, she’s trying to tap the magical powers that many believed attached to tassels of holy men.

Now, a Jewish person hearing this story would be thinking, “No, no, no, no! Do not touch Him!

He will become unclean!”

Anyone she touches will become unclean – a reminder that sin defiles.

But Luke wants the skeptic in all of us to see that with her touch, rather than Him becoming unclean, she becomes clean.

“Immediately her discharge of blood ceased.

Amazing!

Jesus is more powerful than the defilement of disease and sin.

When we come to Christ in faith, He is not defiled by us, we are cleansed by Him.

That is the good news!

Jesus has power over sin.

That’s what Luke wants Theophilus and all of us to see.

Sin’s alienating power meets its match in Jesus of Nazareth.

John Wesley was mugged one night.

He had little money, but as the thief left in frustration Wesley called, “Stop!

I have something more to give you.”

“Say what!?”