Sunday Sermon

"Talitha Cum"
[Mark 5:21--43]
March 19, 2006 Second Reformed Church

Picture your house or apartment. On your house or apartment, you have gutters and leaders. When God gives us rain, the gutters and leaders receive the rain from the roof and work as a conduit to apply that water to the ground away from the house or it dumps it out in the street. The gutters and leaders don't cause it to rain; that system, that instrument, receives the rain and distributes it and applies it where we want it to go. However, a pile of leaders and gutters is useless without a house or apartment that they are attached to. The same is true of faith.

Faith is the instrument by which we receive and apply to ourselves all the benefits we have from Christ (Petter, 285). For example, Christ gives us salvation, and it is by the instrument of faith that we receive salvation and apply it to ourselves. Faith does not cause salvation; it is the instrument that receives and applies salvation. Faith does not cause anything to happen; it is the conduit by which we receive and apply Christ's benefits. Like the gutters and leaders on a house, we received salvation and all Christ's Benefits through faith and apply them to ourselves. However, without regeneration, without Christ changing the inclination of our will, replacing our heart, there is nothing for Christ to attach our faith to, for the receiving of His Benefits. And whatever it is that we call faith at that point, is like leaders and gutters without a house. God must change us, first, give us a house on which to attach gutters and leaders -- He gives us faith -- and then we receive all that He gives us by faith.

Faith is the instrument by which we receive and apply to ourselves all the benefits we have from Christ.

How do we receive the gift of faith? "Faith comes by hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ" (Romans 10:17). We receive faith from Christ, as it pleases Him, as we hear the Word read and preached. There is no other way given in the Scripture. That is why the Word is and must remain central to our worship. It is through the reading and preaching of the Word that God is pleased to give us the faith to receive His Benefits. And this faith is the instrument by which we apply what He gives us.

After Jesus healed the demoniac, He went back, again, to the other side of the Sea of Galilee. And when He got there, the crowd pressed around Him again. The fact of miracles He was performing was spreading and people were coming to Him to be healed and to be delivered from demons, and to see what He would do, and to hear what He would say.

And one of the leaders of the synagogue, Jairus, came to Him and fell at His feet and begged Him to come to his home and just lay His hands on his dying daughter. For he knew that if Jesus would just lay His hands on her, she would be well again. How did he know that? Where did his faith come from? It could only come from one place: he had heard the Word. He had heard what Jesus had done for others, and now in the desperation of seeing his daughter nearing the end of her life, God had mercy on him and gave him the faith to believe that Jesus could heal her.

And Jesus agreed to go with him -- and the whole crowd followed, pressing against Jesus, reaching in to touch Him, to get His attention, to feel the presence of the Man, the rabbi. And one of the women in the crowd was a woman who was ill with an issue of blood that she had be stricken with for twelve years running. We men can only begin to imagine. She certainly would have been weak, anemic. She had been to all the doctors and she had spent all of her money, and in the end, they had made her worse. We understand how that can happen. And then she heard -- she heard the Word that had come to Galilee, that Jesus was healing and He was teaching about God, and she knew -- God had mercy on her and gave her the faith to believe -- and she knew, if she would only touch His robe, that she would be healed of this affliction.

But it was more than just physical healing that she sought. In Israel, there was a law that would have prevented her from going to worship for all of those twelve years. In fact, the law said that she was not even allowed to touch another person -- she was without human touch for twelve years. Listen, "When a woman has a discharge, and the discharge in her body is blood, she shall be in her menstrual impurity for seven days, and whoever touches her shall be unclean until evening. And everything on which she lies during her menstrual impurity shall be unclean. Everything on which she sits shall be unclean. ... If a woman has a discharge of blood for many days, not at the time of her menstrual impurity, or if she has a discharge beyond the time of her impurity, all the days of the discharge she shall continue in her impurity" (Leviticus 15:19-20, 25). Since she was unclean, she was not allowed in the temple or the synagogue, and since she was unclean, anyone who touched her or anything that she touched, they would also become unclean. She had been isolated for twelve years due to her impurity.

But God had mercy on her and gave her the faith to believe in Jesus and His Word. She had faith in Him and applied it to her distress and knew by God that if she would only touch His robe, she would be healed and set free. Think about the chance she was taking: if she was wrong, by touching Jesus, she would make Him unclean. If Jesus were anyone less that God Himself, she would corrupt Him and bar Him from the temple, and she would prove that He was not that Savior. And notice that Jesus was not wearing a magic robe, because the crowd was pressing against Him, touching and pushing and leaning -- many people had their hands on Him as they walked towards Jairus' house.

But she was right, and by faith she applied the Word she had heard about Jesus to herself, and she touched Jesus, and immediately she was healed -- completely. She was free from her disease; she was welcome back into the temple; she was allowed to make human contact again.

And Jesus said, "Who touched Me?" And the disciples responded, "You've got to be kidding." So, Jesus turned and looked at the crowd, and the woman came before Him and prostrated herself before Him and told Him everything. And Jesus comforted her and told her that she was not only physically healed, but spiritually healed as well. She had been saved in the physical and the spiritual sense, and Jesus gave her His Peace -- the same peace that He gives to us: "Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid" (John 14:27).

While Jesus was comforting her, a messenger came from Jairus' house and told him not to bother Jesus any more; his daughter had died. But Jesus overheard him and said to Jairus, "Do not be afraid, but believe." Jesus said, "What have you received about Me? What have you heard? Does this news present an impossible road block to Me? Or do you believe that I overcome death as well as disease?"

Jesus was testing and strengthening his faith.

He obviously believed in Jesus' Authority over death, because they continued on to his house. And as they got near to the house, they heard what would have been common in those days -- screaming and crying and wailing and dirges being played on musical instruments. In those days, in a number of the cultures, it was not just the immediate family who attended funerals, but singers and musicians were also hired to increase the sound of the mourning. So as they approached, it was not just the family crying, but all of the people who had been paid to increase the sound of their grief.

As they neared the door, Jesus forbade anyone to enter but Jairus, Peter, James, and John. And they entered, and Jesus said, "Why are you upset and weeping? The child is not dead but asleep." And the hirelings laughed at Jesus and mocked Him. They did not have faith. God had not given them belief. They acted according to the desperate evil that the Scripture says lies at the foundation of the natural heart. And Jesus threw them out of the house.

Have you been laughed at for what you believe, for having faith? Jude promises us, "In the last time there will be scoffers, following their own ungodly passions" (Jude 18). When I was in seminary, we were told that vast sections of the Scripture are not historically true. We were told that we could skip sections of the moral law that don't fit in with today's culture. I have been told in expletives that being a good person and helping the poor is fine, but believing that this is the inerrant, infallible Word of God is foolishness. Peter said, "If you are insulted for the name of Christ, you are blessed, because the Spirit of glory and of God rests upon you" (I Peter 4:14).

The Incarnate God came into the house and said, "If you believe in Me, you'll stop crying, because I have the power over life and death. If you have any understanding at all, you would stop mourning as though she is gone forever, because death is not the end -- we live on eternally." And they laughed at Him, so He threw them out.

Jesus, Peter, James, John, Jairus, and his wife, went into the little girl's room, and Jesus took her hand and said, "Talitha cum," which means, "Little girl, I say to you, wake up," and this twelve year old girl immediately woke up and stood up and walked around. As Paul writes, "The first man Adam became a living being; the last Adam became a life-giving spirit" (I Corinthians 15:45).

All those who are Christians have heard this same call, "Little girl, little boy, I say to you, wake up." Every Christian has had Jesus wake us from the sleep of spiritual death and bring us into the waking world of spiritual life. Yet, here, as in other places, Jesus shows us that He has the authority over physical death as well; He not only gives us spiritual life, but He raises us from physical death.

Martha understood this, even as she mourned the death of Lazarus. "Jesus said to her, 'Your brother will rise again.' Martha said to him, 'I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.' Jesus said to her, 'I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?' She said to him, 'Yes, Lord; I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, who is coming into the world'" (John 11:23-27). And He physically raised Lazarus from the dead.

And then Jesus told Jairus not to tell anyone what had happened, because His hour had not yet come.

Jesus' hour came, and He was glorified. We have been given the whole of God's Word and these sixty-six books are the whole Word of God. If we are Christians this morning, we have been given faith, by which we apply this Word to us. Yet some of us don't think we need it. Recently the Chinese Church, which is persecuted -- Christians are imprisoned and killed in China for believing -- they were asked how the American Church could pray for them. And the Chinese Christians responded that it is we who need the prayers, and the prayers of the Chinese for us is that we would be persecuted for our faith, that we would not be so casual about our Christianity and so apathetic about the Word.

After the woman had been bleeding for twelve years, her faith was strong. She was desperate and she humbled herself and clung to the Word until she received an answer from God. Jairus' daughter was dead, and still he brought Jesus into the house, because He had heard the Word and believed that Jesus is Almighty, and he waited on Him.

What disaster must befall us before we go first to the Word of God and apply it to ourselves through faith?

God has given us His Word; it's all true. God gives us Salvation through Jesus Alone, and He gives us faith, and He calls us to live as Christians.

Are you ready?

Let us pray:
Almighty God, we thank You for giving us faith, and for all the benefits of Your Salvation. We ask that You would cause Your Church to rise up in America, in the RCA, here at Second Reformed -- that we would become a people ever more devoted to Your Word and seeking You and Your Kingdom first. Make us love Your Word and desire to read it and know it and apply it. Give us strength during our trials and when others attack the Truth of Your Word. May we be a witness and a glory to You in all that we do. In Jesus' Name, Amen.