So let's then read God's Word together. It's Luke chapter 8, verses 40 to 48. Now, when Jesus returned, the crowd welcomed Him, for they were all waiting for Him. And there came a man named Jairus, who was a ruler of the synagogue. And falling at the feet of Jesus, he implored Him to come to his house, for he had an only daughter, about 12 years of age, and she was dying. As Jesus went, the people pressed around him. And there was a woman who had had a discharge of blood for 12 years. And though she spent all her living on physicians, she could not be healed by anyone. She came up behind him and touched the fringe of his garment And immediately her discharge of blood ceased. And Jesus said, Who was it that touched me? When all denied it, Peter said, Master, the crowds surround you and you are pressing in on you. And Jesus said, Someone touched me, for I perceive that power has gone out from me. And when the woman saw that she was not hidden, she came trembling. and falling down before Him, declared in the presence of all the people why she had touched Him and how she had been healed immediately. And He said to her, Daughter, your faith has made you well. Go in peace. A reading from God's Word this morning. Well, many of you on the way here this morning were helped by signs. especially if you've never been here before, and you're looking for this building, you're trying to figure out where is exactly Emanuel Church meeting. Hopefully the signs were helpful, whether it was the banner across the front, or the sign on the sidewalk, or the one in the driveway. There were the signs pointing the way, this is Emanuel Church, here's where it is. Now notice something, that given all the people here, not one of you, not one of you, saw the sign on the sidewalk out front and sat down on the sidewalk in front of that sign and said, aha, I've arrived at Emanuel Church. Not one of you. Good job. You passed part one of the exam on signs. You got it right. You realized that the sign wasn't Emanuel Church. The sign pointed beyond itself to where Emanuel Church was. Didn't mean something was wrong with the sign. Didn't mean that the sign was unimportant. It was very helpful, hopefully. But it did its job by pointing the way. And you saw that. You recognized that. That signs point beyond themselves. You got it right. Well done, A+. On Part 1. Now we get to Part 2 of the exam on signs. Part 2 is a little trickier. Part 2 involves two more signs that are before us this morning. And those signs work in a very similar way. But there's going to be a temptation. The temptation for us is going to be to miss what the signs point to. The temptation for us is going to be, as it were, to sit down on the sidewalk next to the sign and just stop there. Two more signs this morning. One was the baptism of Phoebe. Second sign was the miracle we see here in Luke chapter 8. Both signs. You might remember in my explanation of what baptism was a few minutes ago, I used the word sign several times. Baptism is a sign that it points to something, particularly pointing to the work of Christ and the gospel of Christ. And in the gospels, Jesus performs many miracles. And they're real, absolutely real, and for the people who are the recipient of those miracles, they're very significant, as we'll see in the life of this woman. But they're bigger than that. They too, the Gospels say, are signs. They point to something even bigger than a healing. They point, again, to who Jesus is and what He came to do. So two more signs, but again, the temptation will be for us to miss what they point to and just sit on the sidewalk. And getting Part 2 of the exam wrong is much more serious. You get Part 1 wrong and you'll just end up on the sidewalk for an hour and miss a church service. Could be worse. You get Part 2 wrong And you miss the good news of Jesus. You miss the salvation that he holds out that we so desperately need. So this is serious business. Signs. Well, we've talked, take a look at the purpose of signs. Now we need to think a little bit about the problem of uncleanness. This is the first part of what the signs point to. They point to the problem. And if you were to summarize that problem, you could talk about it in Mao's terms, the problem of uncleanness. Pretty easy to see in baptism. Baptism with water, after all, has this picture of cleansing, is it not? Water applied, a kind of ritual washing, a ritual cleansing. And doesn't a washing imply that something's dirty, right? When do you wash your hands? When they're dirty. I went fishing this week. Got bait, live bait on my hands. If you've ever done that, you know how long it takes to get that smell out of your hands. You know, you gotta wash them again, gotta wash them again. They're dirty, how do you know? So you wash them. Why do you wash them? Because they're dirty. Washing implies that there's dirt. And that's part of the symbolism of baptism. Not just for Phoebe, but for all of us, there's a spiritual dirt that needs to be taken care of. And baptism points to that. We'll talk more about that in a minute. Now the uncleanness here in this passage, a little more subtle, at least for us. The Luke's original audience would have been crystal clear. We're told about this woman. We read about her in verse 43. And there was a woman who had a discharge of blood for 12 years. And though she had spent all her living on physicians, she could not be healed by anyone. A serious medical issue she had. This discharge of blood, we're not giving a lot of description, but it goes on for 12 years. Tries all different things, all different methods, spends her whole life saving. Nothing can help. A serious medical condition that goes on and on and on. But there's more than just a medical problem being described here. We might not get it, but the original audience would get it perfectly. According to Old Testament law, and that's what this woman would be living under, according to Old Testament law, a condition like this would render you ceremonially unclean. Ceremonially unclean. That meant, for example, that she couldn't go to the temple to worship God. She was kept at a distance. She couldn't take part in certain religious rituals and practices. She was kept at a distance. She was unclean. She was even kept at a distance from other people. People would keep their distance from her. Why? Because if you touched an unclean person, then you would become unclean. Even if you touched something that the unclean person touched, then you would become unclean. So you see, this is much more than just a medical problem, though it is that. It's bigger than that. It's also a religious problem, a social problem. And what that, that might seem kind of bizarre. to us that this kind of ceremonial law, this idea of uncleanness, didn't mean that she was somehow worse than everyone else. But the Old Testament law, the Bible says, is a teacher, a tutor. It's designed to tutor God's people and to tutor us in who God is and His ways. And the thing that the cleanliness laws tutor us in and teach us in is the holiness of God. that this God, whom these people know and claim to serve, the God of the Scriptures, is holy. He's not just some Santa Claus in the sky. He is majestic, pure in his majesty, awesome in his purity, a brilliant white, if you were to picture it that way. He's holy. And so to be in the presence of this holy God, well, you must be holy too. And what uncleanness pictures is that we, because of sin, are not clean, are not holy. Because of our breaking of God's law, we don't love God with all our hearts. We don't love one another as we would want them to love us. We don't follow God's commandments as we have in the Bible. That's what we do every day, isn't it? Well, that renders us unclean, as it were, spiritually. Dirty. Filthy. That's our hearts. And that becomes a problem for a holy God. How can unholy people approach a holy God? There's a problem. We're dirty. So if you were to picture the problem here, that picture of dirt is a good picture. That's the one that the scriptures tutor us in. That we stand before God apart from cleansing, which we're going to talk about in a minute. We stand before God dirty. A brilliant white, holy God, we stand filthy because of our sin. Think of a two-year-old who is just all by himself, devoured a chocolate ice cream cone. You've seen that, right? And you have the white shirt on, all of a sudden they give you a big hug. Hold it, let's wash up first. That's cute when it comes to a little kid in chocolate ice cream. But when it comes to a holy God, this is serious business. We are, as it were, dirty in His sight because of our sin. That's the problem. That's the problem of uncleanness. And it keeps us at a distance. It keeps us separated from Him, separated from Him now spiritually, and if not dealt with, that problem, separated for all eternity. And so you look at this woman and her problem, and you can rightly say, That's me. I can say that's me because of my sin. I'm separated from God. I need to be cleansed. The problem of uncleanness. So we've talked about the purpose of signs, the problem of uncleanness. Now we get to the good news. And it really is good news. Ready? The good news, the pathway to cleansing. So how do you take something that's dirty and clean it? Well, let's look at this woman. Here we're told that she's been wrestling with this condition for 12 years. And she's tried everything. Spent her entire life savings going from physician to physician to physician and nothing has helped. Then one comes along who can help. Jesus. No one else has been able to help. She's tried everything. Isn't that a picture of us as well? We might try all different things to try to clean ourselves up before God. There's all different things that we could run to. We could spend our whole lives and all of our resources going to things to try to get cleaned up. Some of us try to just ignore the problem, just pretend that God's not there, or maybe God doesn't care, or maybe death will never come. Some of us do all sorts of religious things. Well, if I just do this ritual and attend this service, then maybe that'll clean me up. All different sorts of things just being good really hard to be good Maybe if I do a little few more good things and that'll take away the bad things We could try all these different things some of them are not bad enough themselves Physicians certainly aren't bad in and of themselves But it doesn't work for her and it won't work for us Then one comes along who can help one comes along who can help and we notice Jesus steps into her life and everything is transformed. There's the good news. One finally has arrived who's able to help her. Nothing else has helped. Now here's one who's able to help her. And she gets it. Somehow she's heard about Jesus. Maybe she's heard him teach. Maybe she's heard people talk about his teaching. Maybe she's seen other miracles. She knows enough to know this Jesus can help where no one else could. And nothing's going to stop her from getting to Jesus. Think about even just the boldness of this woman for a minute. We read about this crowd that's pressing in on Jesus. It's kind of like a New York City subway rush hour. People are packed in. So, in order for her to get even close enough to touch Jesus, she's got to kind of push her way through. Think about that for a minute. We said she's unclean. So, in the midst of pushing her way through, everything that she touches all of a sudden becomes unclean. What would people say? Probably some of them knew about her. Or what would they say when they find out who she is? This is serious. But she doesn't care. She's not going to let what other people think keep her away. Wouldn't that have been sad? Think about it for a minute. Wouldn't that be sad if she was so worried about what other people would think that she let Jesus pass by? They're going to get frustrated with me. They're going to get annoyed with me. I'll just let Jesus pass by." She could pass up her chance for healing because she was afraid of what other people think. Isn't that what some people do sometimes? So concerned that, well, if I really follow Jesus according to how He reveals Himself in Scripture, what will people think? You know, they'll think I'm strange. They'll think I'm weird. My family's never going to look at me the same. You know, my co-workers. So often people just let it pass by because they're afraid of what people think. Well, this woman didn't do that. I hope you don't do it either. She's intent. She's going to get to Jesus. She pushes her way through. She touches Jesus and she's healed. Just like that. What no one could do for 12 years, Jesus did in an instant. Why? How? How is it that Jesus can do what no other doctor could do in 12 years? He can do it in an instant. What's different about Jesus? Well, this is something that Luke has slowly been revealing to his readers, who this Jesus is. And he's revealing that this Jesus is very different. He has, first of all, the authority and the power of God. Power to create and recreate. You see it here. She's healed. She's made whole. She's recreated, as it were. This Jesus has the power and the authority of God, well, because He is God. God's own Son, taken on flesh. What Luke has also been revealing to us is this Jesus is a man, fully God, but also fully man. He's just like us, only different than us, in that this Jesus has no sin. And so if the picture of us is filthy, the picture of Jesus is the epitome of clean. And so we get a hint here of how Jesus cleans people up. Remember, the woman touches Jesus. What happens when an unclean person touches a clean person? The clean person becomes unclean. You get a hint of here what Luke's going to expand on. That the way Jesus cleans people up is he himself becomes unclean. Luke's going to tell us that this Jesus, the epitome of clean, of holiness, he's going to go to the cross. He's going to be executed, not just as a criminal, but as executed as one, as they would view it then, who was cursed of God. We say, why? Why? He's the only one who didn't deserve to die. I deserve to die because of my sin, my ugliness, my unholiness, my filth. What happens? Jesus takes the dirt of his people and he puts it on Jesus. Jesus is treated as unclean to clean us up. Here's what Paul says. For our sake, God made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that we might become in him the righteousness of God. I heard a story this week about a man who was for many years a drug addict. Not just a casual user, I mean a real hardcore addict. And his life was powerfully transformed by the gospel, by Christ. And he actually became a pastor, became a preacher. So you have one who knows very intimately what the dirt of sin looks like. And he said this, thinking about this theme, he says, in order for something dirty to become clean, something clean must become dirty. You got it? In order for something dirty to become clean, something clean must become dirty. You know that principle. You know that idea. That's how your washing machine works, right? You put dirty clothes in, you add clean water. Clothes come out clean, water goes out dirty, down the drain. In order for something dirty to become clean, something clean must become dirty. That's how Christ makes us right before Holy God. The One who is the epitome of clean takes our filth, the filth of our sin, on His shoulders and He deals with it at the cross. so that we might be given his perfection, his shining white righteousness, so that we might stand before a holy God. Not because I've done anything great. The only thing I've contributed is my sin. Because Christ has done it all. He's taken away that dirt and dealt with it at the cross. And so then the only question remains is, well, how do we grab a hold of that? I hope you see this as good news. that there is this way that God has made that the filthy, that's us, can become clean, right in God's sight, right in His sight now, right for all eternity. This is significant. I hope you see that's good news. How do you get it? Well, Jesus tells us exactly where it's found, how that good gift is received. You could summarize it this way. It's received by trusting, not touching. By trusting, not touching. Wrestle with real quick the end of this story the woman touches Jesus She's instantly healed, but then Jesus goes through this whole big thing who touched me makes this woman come forward She tells her whole story and you might wonder what's Jesus up to even Peters kind of confused about the thing What Jesus is up to is Jesus really that clueless we've seen earlier Jesus even knows the thoughts of people before they speak It's not Jesus trying to clear up his own confusion He seems to be specifically wanting to clear up any confusion that she might have. Listen to what he says in verse 48. Daughter, your faith has made you well. Go in peace. Or you could also translate it this way. Daughter, your faith has saved you. Literally what it says. Daughter, your faith has saved you. See, Jesus knew that she might be tempted to be confused. The crowd might be tempted to be confused. We might be tempted to be confused. That there was something magical in the touching that healed her. Jesus' garments, because they belong to Jesus, have this kind of magical power, and if you just go ahead and touch them, then hocus-pocus, everything changes. You might be confused to think that it was the touching that saved her. And Jesus very specifically tells her, daughter, your faith has saved you. It's not touching. It's trusting. The touching just was an outward form of it. But it was the trust that she had placed in Jesus that she wasn't going to look to anyone else. She was just going to look to this one. That was her only hope. It's trusting, not touching. Same with us. We think again about baptism. What's our hope for Phoebe? What's our hope for you or for me if you've been baptized? It's not touching. There's nothing sort of magical in the waters where, you know, or magical in my hand where hocus-pocus everything's better. It's not touching. It's trusting. The sign points beyond itself. What does it point to? It points to the Jesus who saves. It's not about touching something. It's about trusting someone. Not about touching something, about trusting someone. There's Jesus who, though He is clean, has made Himself unclean so that we might have His cleanliness given to us. And so the trusting is just looking to Him. It's not about the quality of the faith, it's the object. Trusting in Christ. That's the way to grab a hold. It's to turn from trusting anything else. It's to turn from the old life and say, my only hope to be cleaned up for a holy God now, and as I think about all of eternity, my only hope is trusting in this Jesus who took away sin of sinners like me. That's your hope. See, we start off like this woman starts off. Separated, kept at a distance. trusting in Jesus, we can end up like she ends up. Daughter, son, your faith has saved you. Go in peace. Isn't that how we would want to be sent away? Isn't that the kind of blessing we would want? Go in peace. Peace with God. Peace now. Peace for eternity. That's good. That's what we need. That's what we don't have. Your faith has made you well. Your faith has saved you. Trusting in this Jesus. That's what the signs point to. Don't sit out on the sidewalk and just sit by the signs. Look at what they point to. The Jesus who has brought good news and the good word of blessing that comes to all who receive it. Son, daughter, your faith has saved you. Let's pray. Lord, we pray that you would give us that good gift of faith. in the one who has come. Lord, point the way through things visible to those things which are eternal. Give us that faith that we might cling and receive the peace that comes with it. We pray in Jesus name. Amen. Let's close this morning with hymn number 498. You can turn with me in your red hymnal. 498. Jesus, what a friend for sinners. 498. Let's stand and sing.