“When Hopelessness Meets Jesus”
Notes
Transcript
Where is the moment we needed the most
You kick up the leaves and the magic is lost
They tell me your blue skies fade to grey
They tell me your passion's gone away
And I don't need no carryin' on
You stand in the line just to hit a new low
You're faking a smile with the coffee to go
You tell me your life's been way off line
You're falling to pieces everytime
And I don't need no carryin' on
Those are the opening lyrics to a popular song released in 2005 and performed by an artist named Daniel Powter. It’s a song titled, “Bad Day.” If you’ve heard it, maybe you don’t know the first lyrics, but the chorus opens up with, “Cause you had a bad day.”
Now, you and I may have differing opinions on when we strike up Powter’s “Bad Day” to sing over and above our bad days, but have you ever noticed that most of the time, those days start with your alarm going off that’s quickly followed by the debate about whether you should even get out of bed? Whatever happens the rest of the day, you look back and you tell yourself, “See, I shoulda just stayed in bed.”
I came across something kinda funny this week that was titled “You know you’re going to have a bad day when…” Here’s the list of sure signs that a bad day is incoming:
You wake up face down on the pavement
You look to see the birds outside your window and all you see are buzzards
You wake up to discover your waterbed broke and then you remember, you don’t own a waterbed
You use your car horn, but it gets stuck while you’re waiting for a traffic light to turn green and right in front of you is a couple of Banditos on their motorcycles
You come home and find an investigative reporter from KENS 5 or KSAT 12 in your front yard!
We’ve all had bad days. We can move on from bad days because we know the sun will rise with a new day tomorrow that will give us a fresh outlook and a new hope.
But it’s an altogether different story when you and I face not bad things that make for bad days, but when we face situations that seem like there’s no way out of, right? I’m talking about real trouble. Real calamity. The sort of stuff that has you at the end of your rope. Stuff like when you’re alienated and feel like you’re forgotten. Or you’re forsaken and feel abandoned. Or you’re powerless to influence or change your situation. Or you’re not treated fairly or equally. Or a sense of doom has set in about that medical diagnosis. Or you feel trapped in some type of abusive situation and you aren’t able to stand up for yourself.
Any of those senses or feelings can result in someone believing that they’re beyond hope. Maybe that’s you right now. whatever your situation is, a sense of hopelessness has set in that has taken the light right out of your eyes. What do you do? You need something more than to sing another popular, but older song, where George Michael sang, “You just gotta have faith.” No, when hopelessness sets in, the last thing you want to do is sing.
What can we do when we face hopelessness?
What can we do when we face hopelessness?
In our passage this morning, the Lord Jesus encounters two individuals who are facing hopeless situations. The first person we’ll look at this morning is a nameless woman and the second is an influential man named Jairus. The account recorded for us indicates that they each faced hopeless situations and they reveal to us what we can do when we face hopelessness in our lives. The first thing that I want us to see from this text is that when our circumstances bring us to a place of hopelessness,
We must approach Jesus in faith
We must approach Jesus in faith
This passage in Luke sees Jesus and his apostles and the other disciples who were with him all returning to a Jewish-occupied region and upon their return, they are welcomed by a crowd of people who haven’t seen Jesus since the events that involved him teaching that the people who hear and do the Word of God are the true family of God. Since then, Jesus chartered a boat trip to cross the Sea of Galilee where the disciples of the Lord learned that their Master and Teacher has the authority and power to command the winds and the waves of the sea as well as the authority and power to command even the supernatural in delivering the Demoniac from the evil spirts who indwelled him. So by the time they return back across the Sea of Galilee from the country of the Gerasenes where that Demoniac lived, there’s a crowd just waiting for Jesus.
If we remember that Luke told us a chapter ago that Jesus had entered a city called Capernaum, here Luke now tells us that Jesus has “returned” from the Gerasenes, very likely to Capernaum, which is just along the northern part of the Sea of Galilee. And all Capernaum is buzzing about the return of Jesus. To get a proper sense of this, forget about the way that CBS kept cutting away to see Taylor Swift’s reaction to plays in the Super Bowl. If the Super Bowl was being played in Capernaum the same day Jesus returned, the cameras are just fixed on him and the citizens would ask, “there’s a game on?” It’s an understatement to suggest to you that Jesus has reached rockstar status as far as popularity goes in the first century, but nonetheless, that’s the image you should have in your mind as Jesus tries to make his way into Capernaum.
So Jesus is walking along a street and surrounding him is a mob…just thick of people swarming him. I kind of imagine these scenes to be like after we get a real soaker of a shower in the summer and for the next few days, you don’t want to go anywhere near a water tank because if you do, you’ll just get swarmed by mosquitos. People are doing everything that they can to be near Jesus.
Among this mob is a woman of whom we are not given her name. What we know of her is told to us in Luke 8:43a “And there was a woman who had had a discharge of blood for twelve years.” In other words, this poor soul had a medical condition that was incurable. How do we know it’s incurable? Luke 8:43b “…she had spent all her living on physicians, [and] she could not be healed by anyone.” She’d gone to every doctor, every M.D. Anderson Center, every St. Jude’s, every place where experimental treatments were offered and she’d bankrupted herself financially trying to be healed.
Some of us here this morning can identify with this woman in some way. Others of us have seen loved ones face the debilitating nature of prolonged disease where symptoms aside, you wonder if the treatments are causing more harm than good. This woman has suffered with her disease for twelve painful and exhausting years. But more than just the physical and mental effect her disease had on her, there’s an emotional toll that’s be added on to this. In Jewish culture, there are laws about cleanliness. We have that concept in our own minds, too, although we don’t necessarily talk about them as “cleanliness laws.” But this is like a Jewish version of our five-second rule where if we drop food on the floor, we say we can still eat whatever it is that we dropped if we pick it up in five seconds because we tell ourselves that food hasn’t been contaminated if we grab it quick.
Well, in Jewish society, to have touched this woman would have made people contaminated and no one wants to risk being considered contaminated because it’s socially isolating. And think about it, she’s been “contaminated” and isolated for twelve years…
So that’s all in the backdrop of the weight of this scene with this woman. “He’s healed others, maybe he’ll heal me,” she tells herself. The problem is that Jesus has not set up a tent for a healing service this day, but that’s not going to stop her. She’s reached the end of her rope and she’s there in the thick of this mob, pushing past all those rules, jostling between people out of a hope born of her desperation. And, to her surprise, her efforts have got her close enough to Jesus to be able to stretch her arm between others just so she can touch the very end of the clothes Jesus is wearing. And when she touches the fringe of his garment, instantly, the once-incurable disease is healed. Her flow of blood is stopped. It’s a miracle!
She knows it and Jesus knows it, too. Jesus recognized that someone had touched him and so the moving along the road stops and he asks Luke 8:45 “Who was it that touched me?” Everyone in the mob does like we do when mom and dad asked us as kids, “Who did it?” “I don’t know. It wasn’t me.” And you know, every kid in the house denies involvement and the case is closed and chalked up to just magic that did it, right? After a while, Peter chimes in with what we’re all thinking… How could Jesus know that someone touched him when everyone was touching him?
What was it that was unique in this touch? It was that power had gone out of him. How had power gone out of him? Was it that his clothes possessed the power to heal? No. Was it touching Jesus in general that unleashed this healing power? No. It’s because when this woman approached and reached out to Jesus, she did so in faith of who Jesus is. It’s faith that unleashes the power of Jesus into our lives.
Let’s think about lightning for a moment to help grasp the relationship of this woman’s faith and receiving Jesus’ power. I’m sure we’ve all seen lightning before. Lightning is the static charge that builds up in air masses and it contains unimaginable energy potential and this charge is hovering over our heads every day. Now, it’s only under the right conditions that the energy can be released and transmitted to objects below. The object that is struck by lightning has to be grounded; that is, it has to be able to receive a massive influx of electrons and pass them into something that can absorb them.
If an object is insulated from the ground, it can’t conduct the electrons and the lightning passes it by. Something that’s really cool is that if there is an object that can conduct the electrons, that object emits a “positive streamer” just before a lightning strike is a signal that it can absorb the immense amount of power. It happens so quickly that we don’t see this with the naked eye, by slow motion photography captures this.
Why give you this science lesson? Because in ordering something in nature, God’s given us an illustration of how his power is unleashed. You see, if a heart is grounded in faith, it can receive power from Jesus - power to heal us. And let me be clear on this aspect of healing…God’s certainly capable of healing us physically, but many times that’s not his will. Yet, a heart grounded in faith can be healed of its sin-sickness that has made every one of us unclean and isolated from God just like this woman was isolated from her community. God’s power is first and foremost the power to be forgiven of every sin we have done and will do.
When we approach Jesus in faith, He grants us grace and mercy that we do not deserve
When we approach Jesus in faith, He grants us grace and mercy that we do not deserve
And there’s an opposite side to this coin of faith, if you will. And that’s that if the heart is insulated from the Lord by unbelief, the Lord’s power to forgive and heal of our sin-sickness passes by untapped. This woman didn’t let that pass her by, will you?
Well, that’s what we take away from the matter of this woman who touched Jesus in faith to heal her of her condition, but we’ll remember that this miraculous event happens while Jesus is seeking to honor the request of a man named Jairus who has asked Jesus to heal his dying daughter. What I want us to see next this morning is that,
We must approach Jesus with trust
We must approach Jesus with trust
Trust is a very difficult thing to build, I know. We approach every new relationship with a certain amount of distrust, don’t we? “What does she want out of this?” “What will he gain from taking advantage of me?” It’s sad when you think about it, but we do it all the time. Trust is also very easy to destroy. I want us to see why we must give Jesus our full trust and know that he won’t do anything to compromise our trust in him.
The passage opens with Jesus returning to Capernaum and Jairus has brought his need to Jesus. His need is for his dying daughter to be healed. Jairus’ situation is certainly different than the woman with a flow of blood, but it’s no less desperate. Jairus has approached Jesus with desperation wrapped in fear for the life of his only daughter. Two thousand years separate us from this event, but Jairus is as concerned a father for his child as you and I are as parents desiring to protect the welfare of our children. And the text says that Jairus implored Jesus to come to his home to see his dying daughter. Another way to say that is that Jairus begged Jesus. “Sir, I know you have many places to go and many people to see, but my daughter is dying. Please, Teacher, please.”
And Jesus agrees. Imagine the sense of hope that wells up in Jairus’ chest. That fear is not relieved but is temporarily forgotten because this Teacher of God’s Word who has been known to miraculously heal is going to see his dying daughter. This text is overrun with emotion. A father’s love for his daughter, yes. But this is his only child. He’s got to also have a momentary sense of relief for what he knows is his wife’s burden for their daughter.
So they set out and the going is slow. When we’re driving and we see an ambulance flying to wherever it’s going, we’re supposed to pull over to get out of the way so that emergency can be addressed as quickly as possible. If Jesus were an ambulance, every car on the road has pulled in around it. There’s nothing high-speed about this. That fear and anxiety must be returning to Jairus. And fear has the potential to reveal where we lack trust and it will reveal where we are selfish rather than selfless.
Put yourself in the shoes of Jairus for a moment. Your daughter is near death. Seconds matter. And the one thing you think can help the situation is moving at a crawl. Y’all ever seen the movie Zootopia? Imagine you’re Officer Judy Hopps at the DMV being serviced by those sloths. It’s not that Jesus lacks the motivation to heal his daughter, it’s just that these people won’t get out of the way!
And then, Jesus stops. He can’t stop. Why’s he stopped? Because someone touched him? Goodness, what must Jairus have been thinking and feeling right then? The mob widens out around Jesus because Jesus is making a big deal about something and come to find out, Jesus has stopped coming to heal my daughter on account of an unclean woman who had no business being there in the first place? And now Jesus calls her “Daughter.” “Daughter? What about my daughter!”
And just when the train is about to get rolling again, in come unimaginable words to a parent. Luke 8:49 “Your daughter is dead; do not trouble the Teacher any more.” Chilling words. I have to think that for all the noise that was that mob, the whole scene falls silent. There are no words to describe a parent’s state at this moment. Where is God in that moment? Is God so easily distracted that he couldn’t remain attentive to the need of the daughter of Jairus?
I know I am. I know that I fail regularly. I fail at being the husband my wife deserves all the time. Take my wife out for a cup of coffee and she’ll fill you in on the details. I fail at being a father my girls deserve. I know I let you down as your pastor when I forget to acknowledge your birthday or to ask about your latest doctor’s appointment. It’s not that I want to do any of those things intentionally. It’s not that I don’t care. I am sinfully flawed, incapable of remembering everything, unable to be in multiple places at once, and really bad at communicating with clarity all the time. And those things are true for each of us. Sinfully flawed. Easily distracted. Unable to give the proper attention where it is needed most every time.
But for as much as Jesus can sympathize with our weakness, Jesus isn’t us. Jesus’ attention isn’t divided like ours. He’s able to sense an individual touching him in the middle of a crowd and sense the faith and trust behind that touch. None of that takes away from his perfect timing and provision for the daughter of Jairus, either. This is where we need to remember the truth that we learned two weeks ago. We saw then that when life’s storms seem inescapable, we have to remember two things - that God is in control and that God loves us. Jesus announces to Jairus, Luke 8:50 “Do not fear; only believe, and she will be well.”
Jesus arrives at the home of Jairus where those in the home are weeping over the death of this twelve year old only daughter and Jesus proclaims what only he has the ability and authority to proclaim. Luke 8:52 “Do not weep, for she is not dead but sleeping.” And then he commands the girl, “Child, arise.” And she rose.
When we approach Jesus with trust, we know he is attentive to every individual and every situation
When we approach Jesus with trust, we know he is attentive to every individual and every situation
Incurable disease. Death. Jesus asked his disciples on the boat after he calmed the winds and the waves, Luke 8:25 “Where is your faith?” Jesus is posing that question to you and me this morning. Where is your faith? If you’re struggling on matters of faith, there are four points of application that I want to call out to your attention this morning:
Application
Application
1. You can have faith in and trust Jesus because he accepts us where we are at
1. You can have faith in and trust Jesus because he accepts us where we are at
The woman with a flow of blood was an outcast. She came to Jesus after she’d tried everything else. Jairus believed in Jesus, but it wasn’t an especially strong faith - he thought that Jesus had to lay his hands on his daughter to heal her. Do you remember back in Luke 7 where a centurion believed that Jesus could speak and heal his servant from a distance? But Jairus didn’t go and plead, “Speak the word and my daughter will get well.” Both of these people had a weak faith in comparison to the others, but Jesus accepted them and worked with them from where they were.
The Lord Jesus is so gracious! He doesn’t refuse to work with you unless your faith is perfect. You may have to cry out, “Lord, I believe; help my unbelief!” (Mark 9:24). Come to Jesus wherever you’re at, cast yourself upon him, doubts and all, and he will begin the process of perfecting his good work in you.
2. You can have faith in and trust Jesus because he powerfully works with others
2. You can have faith in and trust Jesus because he powerfully works with others
Jesus started to go with Jairus, but then got interrupted by this bleeding woman. This was a hindrance to Jairus’ faith, in that while Jesus was dealing with her, word came that Jairus’ daughter had died. But it also served to strengthen his faith, as he saw Jesus’ power heal this woman. She had been 12 years in her affliction, the same number of years that Jairus’ daughter had lived. When Jesus called the woman “daughter,” he may have said it partially for Jairus’ benefit. In effect Jesus was saying, “Jairus, this woman is my daughter who has been unclean for 12 years; I must heal her, too! What I do for her, I can do for your daughter.”
Jairus was put on hold while Jesus answered the call of this woman. Sometimes God puts us on hold. Sometimes our prayers don’t seem to be getting through. When that happens, it’s easy to think, “What’s going on? Why isn’t God answering my prayers?” But then we hear of how he has answered someone else’s prayers, and we’re encouraged. He can do for me what he did for that person!
3. You can have faith in and trust Jesus because he is tender
3. You can have faith in and trust Jesus because he is tender
When word came that his daughter had died, Jairus’ face must have reflected fear and panic. But Jesus quickly and tenderly calmed him: Luke 8:50 “Do not fear; only believe…”
Notice how tenderly Jesus dealt with the little girl. He took the dead girl’s hand, a defiling act for a Jew. But Jesus could not be defiled by death. His touch communicated that he cared for her. Then he spoke tenderly to her, “Child, arise.” Then Jesus told the exuberant parents to give her something to eat! In all of the excitement, that practical matter could easily be overlooked. Jesus tenderly cares for the whole person.
Doesn’t this glimpse of Jesus’ tenderness make you want to have faith in and trust Him!?! Like a father helping his youngster learn to ride a bike, Jesus comes alongside and cheers, “Attaway! Keep going! You’re doing great!” If we fall and skin our knee, he tenderly cleans and bandages it and helps us get up and start over again.
4. You can have faith in and trust Jesus because he has power over death
4. You can have faith in and trust Jesus because he has power over death
For Jesus, raising the dead was as easy as waking a sleeping child would be for us. He merely spoke the word and the dead girl came to life. Each time Jesus raised the dead, he did it by speaking: To the widow of Nain’s son, “Young man, I say to you, arise.” (Luke 7:14). To Lazarus, “Lazarus, come out.” (John 11:43). Jesus said, John 5:28 “…an hour is coming when all who are in the tombs will hear [my] voice” What a claim! That day is coming and when it does, his voice will cause bodies decomposed for centuries to be resurrected! Even now he speaks to those who are spiritually dead and imparts new life to them by his grace (John 5:25-26)!
Because Jesus is powerful over death, we can have faith in and trust Him! No matter how fearful the situation, Jesus wants us to trust Him. He may or may not deliver our loved ones or us from death. But even if he does not, we can trust his mighty power and know that one day he will speak the word and all we who have trusted in him will be gathered with him, triumphant over sin and death.
We must bring all our hopelessness to Jesus.
We must bring all our hopelessness to Jesus.
Jesus is hope for the hopeless. Even when our situation is beyond hope, he invites us to fear not and believe. However fearful, however hopeless, however helpless, Jesus’ word for you is “Don’t fear, just trust me.”
He wants you to move from fear to faith in him. We’ve each been defiled by sin and we each must be cleansed or we cannot spend eternity in the presence of holy God. We must lay hold of Christ by faith. Don’t fear that your weak faith isn’t enough. Jesus will accept it and work to strengthen it. Weak faith is enough to lay hold of his mercy, but indifference or hesitation can result in the ruin of your soul. If you lay hold of Jesus by faith, you will hear his words, “Your faith has made you well; go in peace.”
Jesus is the only One who can calm our fears, because he alone has conquered death. John 14:1–3 “Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in me. In my Father’s house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also.”