January 10, 2016 Faith-Filled Hope Today, we re going to talk about Faith-Filled Hope as we look at the story of two distinctly different people in the Gospel of Mark. And to grasp onto what their stories mean for us today, I think it s good that we discuss briefly the difference between faith and hope. A good definition for faith, one of the best I could think of or have heard, is that faith is an idea that no matter what happens, it is for the better. We place our faith in Christ, knowing that no matter what happens in this life, he has a plan and he will carry it to it s ultimate and best conclusion. Hope, on the other hand, while related very closely to faith, is just a bit different. It is a desire for a certain outcome to take place. The best way that I can say it would be like this: I had faith that someone was going to win the Vikings-Packers game last Sunday, and I sure did HOPE that it would be the Vikings! Both of these matters faith and hope are, according to the Bible, good things for us, only to be bested by love. 1 Corinthians 13:13 And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love. Faith is something for which a believer cannot do without. In the midst of living this life, if we do not have faith that God is ultimately working all things out for our and his good, then our faith if it could be called that will shatter the moment that troubles in life occur. As Hebrews says, faith is being sure of what we hope for, but I think the whole of Scripture would also say that faith is also being sure that God is faithful even when what we hope for doesn t happen. (Shadrach, Meshak, and Abednego) 1
As disciples of Christ, I think it becomes easy to have faith, yet still very possible to be void of almost all hope. Faith becomes almost this intellectual thing inside of us that just continues to say, No matter what, I trust God and that s all that matters. Life is horrible, but I still trust God. While to an extent that is good it displays a faith that exists regardless of circumstances are there enough of us out there saying, While a lot in life is horrible, I place my hope in Christ that he will do inconceivably great things? Hope is a great thing! Hope is a thing that says God can make a bad situation good. It s interesting that Paul wrote that faith, hope and love remain, and then described love as the greatest. Was he going in succession? Is hope also better than faith? Is it enough for us to just believe that in the end God will bring all things together as he deems necessary and at least we as believers will get to heaven? Or is it better yet to have HOPE that in the midst of believing Jesus is carrying things out for our good, that he can actually take some of what is not good and make it good? Instead, it seems that we ve come to the point where we, as Christians, can become some of the worst at looking at scenarios in life without any shred of hope whether it s the outlook we have on ISIS and the doom they will surely bring us, or the state of our government, or the utter lostness of most people in our world today we are guilty of sometimes acting as though there is no hope, but we hold onto our faith that God will at least carry us through to death so we can see heaven. Well, I don t know about you, but I want to live a life of faith AND hope! I want to believe that what I see as wrong with the world that God himself can actually do something to make it better. 2
The story we re going to look at today is found in Mark 5:21-43, and it s a story of hope. We ll meet a synagogue ruler named Jairus and an unnamed woman suffering from an issue of bleeding. The Gospel writer put these two stories together for a reason and it centers around the hope they shared in Jesus! Mark 5:21-43 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. 22 Then one of the synagogue rulers, named Jairus, came there. Seeing Jesus, he fell at his feet 23 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." 24 So Jesus went with him. As we go through the story, I m going to interject some thoughts to hopefully let us see how this story looked to the people directly involved with the story that day. We have a Jewish leader, a man who s child is dying. For anyone who is a parent, you can imagine the desperation of this man. His child is dying and he can do nothing about it, and he begins to hear stories about a man who is known to heal people. And so he goes to find that man. He asks him to come and to heal his daughter. And while they are on their way, the man he has come to bring to his daughter, Jesus, stops and asks a ridiculous question. 24 A large crowd followed and pressed around him. 25 And a woman was there who had been subject to bleeding for twelve years. 26 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. 27 When she heard about Jesus, she came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak, 28 because she thought, "If I just touch his clothes, I will be healed." 29 Immediately her bleeding stopped and she felt in her body that she was freed from her suffering. 30 At once Jesus realized that power had gone out from him. He turned around in the crowd and asked, "Who touched my clothes? 3
With people crowding all around him, pressing up against him, hoping to see the celebrity of the moment / spiritual man / prophet / healer, he asks who touched him! Out of all those people, who WASN T touching him may have been a better question. Meanwhile, put yourself in the place of the bleeding woman. For 12 years, she has suffered. Physically, it has been painful. But socially, it has been all the more awful. Today, an issue of this sort would be known probably just to the woman and her doctor. But in Jesus day, EVERYONE knew that for 12 years she had been considered according to the Jewish religious law unclean. She had been excluded from going to the temple. She couldn t touch people, for they would also become unclean and would be required to go through the process of religious cleansing. Bottom line, she was a social outcast due to her rare and uncomfortable physical problem. This woman had done everything she could to seek remedy, all to no avail. She only wanted to be healed. So, she goes to the man that she had heard could heal. But, she does so quietly. She doesn t want to let anyone know that she, an unclean woman, has touched the clothing of the great healer and prophet. But Jesus doesn t let her off the hook that easy! To his disciples astonishment, Jesus chooses to figure who it is that has just touched him, for he knows that a miracle of healing has taken place! 31 "You see the people crowding against you," his disciples answered, "and yet you can ask, 'Who touched me?' " 32 But Jesus kept looking around to see who had done it. 33 Then the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came and fell at his feet and, trembling with fear, told him the whole truth. 34 He said to her, "Daughter, your faith has healed you. Go in peace and be freed from your suffering. 4
The first thing you might be thinking is, Why if she had enough faith to believe that Jesus was good enough to heal her with just a touch of his robe why would she be trembling in fear of him finding her out? This is probably more of a cultural fear than anything else the very act, as an unclean person, of touching another person was a religious no-no. It made the person you touched, even if it was just their clothes, unclean. She had just made Jesus unclean! Or had she? While this woman was holding onto her last straw, and she had no place to go but Jesus, she put her hope in him to heal her. What she didn t know was that he could do so much more. Jesus, to her shock, even had the power to overcome her ceremonial uncleanness! David Garland writes: Jesus ministry shows that God s holiness is unaffected by human impurity when it comes in contact with it. Throughout the Gospel of Mark, Jesus connection with what is unclean does not render him unclean. Quite the reverse, Jesus purges the impurity. Think about that while this woman struggled from a physical standpoint, her greater struggle was with a religious and social structure that rendered her unclean and invaluable. She had NO PLACE in life until her only hope fell upon Jesus. And he did more to relieve her suffering than she even expected. Jesus purged her of not only her illness, but even of her impurity. Jesus succeeded when all else that the world had to offer her had failed her. Only Jesus not a doctor, not a stronger personal will power ONLY JESUS can purge us of our uncleanness. Only He is unaffected by sin and impurity, and so only he has power over it! Jesus shows here that he has power of sin and the effects of our sin! He can handle it! That s incredible hope! Now, let s go back to the guy who is waiting on Jesus to come and heal his daughter, who lays dying at home. You can imagine the impatience coursing 5
through his veins as Jesus stops for this woman. And then, the worst possible news comes. 35 While Jesus was still speaking, some men came from the house of Jairus, the synagogue ruler. "Your daughter is dead," they said. "Why bother the teacher any more? Notice here the difference between faith and hope. These men struggle from a lack of faith, which is the foundation for having hope. Meier comments: The subliminal message here is that Jesus is only a teacher, and death marks the limit of whatever power he may have. They do not see Jesus as divine, capable of bringing life from death. Their hope remained while the girl was alive. Now that she is dead, it shows the level of their faith in who Jesus is and what he could accomplish. Scary thing is, I m not so sure this doesn't resemble us at times. Is our FAITH in who Jesus is so weak that we really can t find it in us to place our HOPE in him to accomplish the seemingly impossible tasks in our world today? I think of a time in college where this question hit me hard (I know I ve shared this with our youth I forget whether I share some stories with youth or on Sundays so if you ve heard it, please forgive me and think of the application:) My faith says that I believe God can and wants to save anyone. But I had become so hard hearted toward someone I had grown up with, thinking how awful he was, that I literally had NO HOPE whatsoever that God could do ANYTHING with that person. And then God challenged me. I felt him asking me to pray for that person. I can t say I did it everyday, but when I thought of him, I did. 6
And guess what? No, I don t think he s yet living for Jesus. BUT, God started by changing MY heart. And some efforts were made to where now this former least favorite person in my world is someone that I enjoy seeing and whom I enjoy pleasant conversation with. Some of his family has come through our church s ministry. And now, I can honestly say that I have a hope in Christ that he CAN do the work that neither I nor anything else in this world can do! CHRIST ALONE can do in the otherwise hopeless situations what nothing and no one else on earth can do! But, if we fail to see situations with a glimmer of hope in Christ, we have to question if we really have the faith in him that he is the Great Almighty! Our hope in him really only follows the level of our faith in him! Going on Jairus, has just been hit with the brick that his daughter is dead. And, Jesus, without skipping a beat, asks him to have faith in him and remain hopeful! 36 Ignoring what they said, Jesus told the synagogue ruler, "Don't be afraid; just believe." 37 He did not let anyone follow him except Peter, James and John the brother of James. 38 When they came to the home of the synagogue ruler, Jesus saw a commotion, with people crying and wailing loudly. 39 He went in and said to them, "Why all this commotion and wailing? The child is not dead but asleep." 40 But they laughed at him. I ve got to stop there! To be honest, it is that very statement that has always made me stop and question this passage. It is this statement that floors me! Here you are, coming to a house filled with people who are mourning the death of a little girl, and Jesus tells them the girl is just asleep and this is the reaction you get? I can think of one of two reactions that I would have. I would either get mad at Jesus and say, Don t you come in here and mock us and this little girl! Get away! Or, I think the other reaction would be, through tears, Please Jesus, make it so! 7
The last thing I could imagine doing, in my grief, is LAUGHING at all! The King James Version translates this as they laughed him to scorn. For whatever reason, that idea of scorn, which the Greek word that was used here meant, was not really drawn out fully in the NIV translation, but it means to deride someone. In other words, these people were laughing at Jesus, mocking HIM, in an effort to deride or demean him. It wasn t just a hurt laugh that really wasn t a laugh. They were ridiculing Jesus. It seems to me that people who TRULY CARED ABOUT THIS GIRL WOULD HAVE NOT HAD THE ENERGY OR HEART TO MOCK JESUS IN THIS DEVASTATING MOMENT. DID THEY REALLY UNDERSTAND THE GRAVITY OF THIS GIRL S DEATH? Perhaps they didn t care at all about the girl. You may see in your Study Bible notes regarding this verse that it was actually customary to hire professional mourners for situations like this people who were paid to come in and cry and wail and fill the home with the sound of mourning! But, on the other hand, this may have been too soon for those people to be hired. Either way, they show a real callousness of heart to the life tragedy that has just occurred! You could maybe excuse the men who came to tell Jairus that his daughter was dead for not placing their hope in Jesus ability to still bring her healing Jesus hadn t really been in the habit of performing that level of miracle, and by all means, when someone was dead, as far as they knew, they were dead. I read an article the other day that said there was a Russian guy, I believe on New Year s night, that got so drunk at a party that the medics were called and they pronounced him dead later at the hospital. Well, a few hours later, in the MORGUE, the guy woke up. Crazier still, the article said that the first place he went was to his friends house where he was partying the night before, but where now they were all 8
mourning his death. The guy knocked on the door and his friend who answered it passed out in shock! Those men that came to Jairus had not ever seen anything like that and they had no indication from Jesus that he would heal the little girl. Not yet anyhow. But these people, who were in the home Jesus TOLD them she was only asleep. He s saying, I m about to do something here, and it s gonna be cool. And they just make fun of him. They showed utter callousness to a situation that is dear to Jesus heart. I was guilty of that callousness of heart when thinking about my former enemy and thinking he was outside of God s possible reach! I show callousness of heart when I consider the individuals who make up ISIS as hopeless, beyond the scope of God s saving grace. I show callousness when I say that our schools or our government or our economy is without hope. It s funny throughout history, people have said that, and God has shown a redemptive nature time and time again. Am I so blind to God s redemptive nature that I m naive enough to say that ANYTHING is outside of his ability to bring back to life? Do I laugh off tragic situations in life like a professional mourner, not understanding the gravity of the situation nor caring enough to hope in God for a change? What about a so-called lost and hopeless marriage. As a believer, I would think that it is our duty to place our hope in Christ s redemptive power, even as one spouse is in the middle of signing the divorce papers at the courthouse. If our faith is that God can do anything, that he is our Great Redeemer and the giver of life and the one who defeated ALL death, shouldn t we be more hope-filled than pessimistic? Shouldn t we belief that, even in the face of insurmountable odds, that 9
the One who overcame death doesn t care about probable outcomes? Jesus is the ultimate odds defeater. He works in the supernatural and makes his own odds. They are: As I deem necessary, I carry it out. No matter what! We can and should place our hope in THAT GOD every time! Now, for sure, what we hope for doesn t always come into existence. Yes, that divorce paper may get signed. Yes, the economy may have drained all you had. And when that happens, we rest on our faith! I gave you a definition of hope and faith earlier, but this is another way we can look at it: Hope is the BELIEF that God CAN do something. Faith is the KNOWLEDGE that God WILL do something. Our faith should always lead us into believing that God CAN do what we hope he will do. But our faith should also lead us back, in those moments where life takes a turn we weren t hoping for, to the place where we lean on what we KNOW GOD WILL DO, holding onto promises like Romans 8:28 We know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. Ephesians 2:8 For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith--and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God. When all is said and done, God will do for you what is best in his eyes. And we can have faith that he really does always know best BUT WE DON T ALWAYS KNOW BEST, AND IF WE WITHHOLD OUR HOPE IN HIM, WE MAY KEEP HIM FROM DOING ALL THAT HE WOULD OTHERWISE DO. In a moment, you re going to see that the people in the dead little girl s house who laughed at Jesus it kept them from seeing a miracle. Jesus even says in the Gospels that 10
there were places he didn t perform miracles because of people s lack of belief. If we don t hold out hope that God CAN actually do something, sometimes we make it so. Faith and hope actually matter, and it actually enables God s power to be showcased! So, here we come to the people who did hold out hope in Christ s power over the death of this little girl. 40 After [Jesus] put them all out [those who had been laughing at him], he took the child's father and mother and the disciples who were with him, and went in where the child was. 41 He took her by the hand and said to her, ""Talitha koum!"" (which means, "Little girl, I say to you, get up!"). 42 Immediately the girl stood up and walked around (she was twelve years old). At this they were completely astonished. 43 He gave strict orders not to let anyone know about this, and told them to give her something to eat. Here s what we need to see in the culmination of this great story: Jesus brought 5 people in the little girl s room with him her mom and dad and three of his closest disciples. And in that room, he performed a miracle. He brought life from where there was death. And only 5 others got to see it! Why were they the ones chosen? They were chosen because their faith in Jesus led them to place their hope in him! The hope of the mom and the dad and the hope of Jesus disciples were both placed in Jesus, but it was born of two different things. For Jairus and his wife, much like for the bleeding woman, their hope was born of desperation. They knew that no one and nothing else in the world could carry out their hopes of a breathing little daughter except for Jesus. He was their only hope and their faith in him allowed for them to place their hope in him. Sometimes, our hope in Christ will be born from desperation. 11
The hope of the disciples was born of something else. Sure, while they didn t want to see a little 12 year old girl die, they probably were not very personally attached to her and to her well-being. Definitely not to the degree of her parents. But they placed their hope in Jesus. And why? Because they saw that Jesus himself cared about her. Whether your hope in Christ is born from desperation or from the understanding that it s God s desire that it happen, it is our hope in Christ that opens the door to Christ s power. Those who had no hope in Christ s ability to raise this little girl from the dead they didn t get to be in the room and witness the miracle. No other bleeding women who DIDN T go and touch Jesus robe is ever mentioned in the Bible for having experienced a healing of their bleeding. Hope in Christ opens the door to his power, and it also leads us to action. It led Jairus to seek out Jesus and ask him to come and heal his daughter. It got the bleeding woman to go against societal rules and to leave her home and to touch another person. When you hope in Christ, it shows through a heart that leads one to prayer rather than despair! We give our needs to God in hope rather than feeling crushed by the world. As hope in Christ leads us to action, it reveals in us a desperation for him rather than desperation in our circumstances. Hopelessness is saying that we don't believe a good outcome is possible--this is desperation at it's worst. Hope in Christ is saying that--despite everything--he can do it! This is desperation at its best; desperation for God alone! What person do you need to regain hope for? What seemingly un-winnable circumstance in your life do you need to start hoping in God for rather than finding reasons for pessimism with? The question is, do you 12
want to be someone who is brought in to the room to watch God do a miracle? I want to be like one of the 5 that Jesus brought into the healing room I want to have hope that God can do the miraculous, for that hope opens the door to God s power. The only people he brings into the room are those who place their hope in his power! PRAY 1) I find myself, at least at times, believing the lie that there is no hope for me...that I've done too much wrong for God to ever accept me. I believe though, that Jesus sees me always as a possible cause that isn't too difficult for himself to make right. I want to accept, in fullness, the grace that Jesus has given to me in his work on the cross--a gift that isn't just hypothetically for all--it's for me in particular! I want to have the hope--and to ask for his help to believe--that Jesus can and wants to make me whole! 2) There are people in my life and situations in my life that I've lost hope for. And I want to ask for God's forgiveness of that fact, and to ask him to help me to see that person, or that situation, the way that he sees it; as something God cares about and has ultimate power over. I want to believe that with Christ, hope for wholeness always abounds, even when things look bleak! 13