and then we'll begin, let's pray. God, we remember together the words of the psalmist, that the law of your mouth is better to me than thousands of gold and silver pieces. And we pray that you would give us that same perspective, that same heart, as we come to your word together this evening. We pray in Jesus' name, amen. Matthew chapter nine, reading verses 18 through 26. This is the word of God. While he was saying these things to them, behold, a ruler came in and knelt before him, saying, my daughter has just died, but come and lay your hand on her and she will live. And Jesus rose and followed him with his disciples. And behold, a woman who had suffered from a discharge of blood for 12 years, came up behind him and touched the fringe of his garment. For she said to herself, if I only touch his garment, I will be made well. Jesus turned, and seeing her, he said, take heart, daughter. Your faith has made you well. And instantly, the woman was made well. And when Jesus came to the ruler's house, and saw the flute players and the crowd making a commotion, he said, go away, for the girl is not dead, but sleeping. And they laughed at him. But when the crowd had been put outside, he went in and took her by the hand, and the girl arose. And the report of this went through all that district. As you can see in your sermon notes, we'll look first at a ruler's request in verses 18 and 19, then a woman's faith, verses 20 through 22, and finally a girl's resurrection in verses 23 through 26. And again, we'll focus on the faith of the ruler and the woman, their faith in Jesus, and on the power of Jesus to heal the sick and raise the dead. A ruler's request. We'll say a few words about the ruler and then about his request. We read in verse 18, while he, Jesus, was saying these things to them, so the things that we looked at last time about the wedding guests and the bridegroom and the garment and the wineskins, while he was saying these things to them, behold, a ruler came in and knelt before him. Now we know from Mark and Luke that the ruler's name was Jairus and that he was one of the rulers of the synagogue the local gathering point for Jewish worship on the Sabbath. So he would have been well-known and well-respected by the community, a VIP in the eyes of the community, if you will. And yet in his own eyes, in this situation, Jesus is the VIP. This ruler, this very important person who was well-known and well-respected, humbles himself. comes in and kneels before Jesus. No matter what our position is, we are never above coming and kneeling before Jesus in our time of need. We may be in a low position, we may be in a high position, but we are always below the Lord Jesus. And like this ruler, we need to be willing to humble ourselves, to acknowledge our insufficiency to admit that we are not enough and to kneel before the Lord to seek his grace and help. That's what the ruler does because of the desperate situation he's in. He comes in and kneels before Jesus and says to him, the second half of verse 18 there, my daughter has just died. He calls her my little daughter in Mark. And Luke tells us that she was his only daughter, and that she was 12 years old. The death of a child is perhaps the most painful experience a parent can go through. This ruler and his wife lost their only daughter, and at the age of 12, near the end of childhood with all of its memories, near the beginning of the teen years with all their potential, At such an age, their only daughter's life had come to an end. The loss captured by those five simple words is incalculable. My daughter has just died. Jairus doesn't come to Jesus as a synagogue ruler, but as a bereaved father. But look at his request, secondly. He says to Jesus, my daughter has just died, but come and lay your hand on her and she will live. Despite the darkness he is in, he sees a light of hope in Jesus. No matter how dark it is for us, when all other lights go out, there is always a light of hope in Jesus Christ for the believer. The ruler doesn't say, come and lay your hand on her, and she might live. He says, come and lay your hand on her, and she will live. In the face of death, he believes in the power of Jesus to give life. He's in the darkness of grief, but he does not give into that darkness. He turns to Jesus, the Lord and giver of life, and says, come and lay your hand on my daughter, and she will live. And how does Jesus respond to the ruler's request? Verse 19, and Jesus rose and followed him with his disciples. It's like there's a spring in his seat. He sees the ruler come in and kneel before him. He hears the ruler's desperate request and confident faith and it says, and Jesus rose and followed him. The same kind of promptness Matthew displayed in responding to Jesus' call to follow him is displayed by Jesus himself in response to the ruler's call for help. And he rose and followed him. Jesus has this same eagerness and willingness to help us in our time of need, doesn't he? There's still a spring in his seat, as it were. And when we come to him in humility and confident faith, he rises and comes to our aid according to his perfect will. So this important ruler comes in and kneels before Jesus in desperation because his daughter has just died, but also in faith, believing in the power of Jesus to raise the dead And Jesus rises with his disciples and begins to follow the ruler to his house. One takeaway for us here is that we can ask God to give us more of this kind of faith in Jesus that we see in Jairus. Ask God to strengthen in you this kind of faith in Jesus that trusts his power and that also trusts his plan. Remember what we sang together last Sunday, thou art coming to a king, large petitions with thee bring, for his grace and power are such that none can ever ask too much. We're not coming to a cruel dictator who has plenty of power, but no grace, and therefore we might be scared to ask him for too much. Nor are we coming to a sort of kindly grandfather who is full of grace but limited in power and therefore we might be hesitant to ask him for more than he can handle. No, we are coming to a king, an all-powerful king and an all-compassionate king. and therefore we can bring large petitions to him because both his grace and his power are such that none can ever ask too much. Perhaps some of that was in the ruler's mind. And whatever we ask, we can be confident that he will either give us what we ask or he will give us something wiser, something better. something even more for our good and for His glory. So whatever it is in your life right now that you most need Jesus for, bring it to Him in prayer with the same kind of faith that the ruler had and trust His power and trust His plan. So we see faith in Jesus and the power of Jesus in these opening verses about a ruler's request. We see it from a different angle in the next few verses about a woman's faith, our second main point. Let's consider that now together. We'll look first at what the woman does and then at what Jesus does. Verse 20, and behold, a woman who had suffered from a discharge of blood for 12 years, came up behind him and touched the fringe of his garment. For she said to herself, if I only touch his garment, I will be made well. So Jesus is on his way to the ruler's house and along the way he encounters this woman. Mark says that she had, quote, suffered much under many physicians and had spent all that she had and was no better but rather grew worse. Luke says, though she had spent all her living on physicians, she could not be healed by anyone. Commentator D.A. Carson wrote that, the nature of the woman's hemorrhage is uncertain. If, as seems probable, it was chronic bleeding from the womb, then she was perpetually unclean. So her suffering was physical, and no doubt emotional, but also social and to an extent spiritual. She had the experience of being perpetually unclean and all that that entailed for 12 long years. Leviticus 15, 25 through 27 stipulates that 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 uncleanness. As in the days of her impurity, she shall be unclean. Every bed on which she lies all the days of her discharge shall be to her as the bed of her impurity. and everything on which she sits shall be unclean, as in the uncleanness of her menstrual impurity. And whoever touches these things shall be unclean and shall wash his clothes and bathe himself in water and be unclean until the evening. Her suffering was extraordinary. But in a way, so was her faith. Though she couldn't be healed by any physician, she believed that she could be healed by Jesus. She says to herself, if I only touch his garment, I will be made well. Again, like the ruler, it's not I might be made well, but I will be made well. And like he believed in the power of Jesus to give life, she believes in the power of Jesus to give healing. And so she comes up behind Jesus and touches the fringe of his garment. That's what the woman does. Let's consider what Jesus does, verse 22. Jesus turned, and seeing her, he said, take heart, daughter. Your faith has made you well. And instantly, the woman was made well. You may remember in Mark and Luke how it says that Jesus perceived that power had gone out from him, and so he says, who touched my garment? And the disciples say, you're in the middle of a crowd of people who are pressing in on you, Jesus, and you're wondering who touched your garment? But then it says that the woman, quote, knowing what had happened to her, came in fear and trembling and fell down before him and told him the whole truth. and declared in the presence of all the people why she had touched him and how she had been immediately healed. And look at what Jesus says to her. Take heart, my daughter. Your faith has made you well. Take heart, my daughter. How comforting those words must have been for her to hear. for her who no doubt had lost heart many times over those 12 long years of suffering. It's so easy to lose heart in the midst of our suffering. But we always have more reasons to take heart than lose heart. Jesus says to her, take heart my daughter, your faith has made you well. Now, it's important for us to understand those words correctly. It can be easy to overemphasize faith. That's what, for example, the Word of Faith movement arguably does, and many faith healers, when they teach that if you have enough faith, you will be healed, and if you aren't healed, it's because you didn't have enough faith. That seems to place too much emphasis on the role of our faith, doesn't it? but we can overreact to that overemphasis by saying that our faith has nothing to do with it. To be sure, Jesus does heal people sometimes without them having true saving faith in him. But that doesn't mean that faith or the lack of it has nothing to do with the healings Jesus performs. Clearly in this case, at least, there is a relationship between the woman's faith and the woman's healing. But it's not like the relationship between, say, your dollar bill and the Snickers bar in the vending machine, put in your dollar and out it comes, put in your faith and out comes your healing. No, the relationship between her faith and her healing is somewhat like the relationship between our faith and our salvation. When we say that we're saved by faith, we don't mean, of course, that our faith saves us and not Jesus. We mean, of course, that Jesus saves us through faith. through our faith and not our works. When we say we're saved by faith, it's shorthand for saying that we're saved by Christ through faith. Faith is the receiving instrument, the hand that receives the free gift of salvation and eternal life. So similarly, when Jesus says to the woman, your faith has made you well, he's not saying that her faith healed her, He of course healed her, but it was through her faith. Her faith was the hand that received the healing power of Jesus. And don't miss the fact that it says, and instantly the woman was made well. How amazing is the power of Jesus that what this woman couldn't get from years and years of the efforts of physicians, she got immediately just from touching the fringe of the garment of Jesus. I came across a wonderful quote from Charles Spurgeon in my studies this week. He said, a piece of fringe and a finger sufficed to form a contact between a believing sufferer and an almighty savior. Along that line, faith sent its message and love returned the answer. As we think about this woman and her faith in Jesus, one thing we can have in Christ that she showed so clearly is the hope that faith gives. Can you imagine how hopeless She must have been at times. After all those long years of suffering, after the rollercoaster experience of her hope ascending when she encountered a new physician who seemed like he might be able to help her, and then plummeting again when he wasn't able to heal her and she was left poorer and sicker. But then she hears about Jesus. who he is, what he's been saying, what he's been doing, and she believes that he can help her. If I only touch his garment, I will be made well. This time, her hope was well founded because it was founded on Jesus. Her faith in Jesus gave her real hope. And it's the same with you and me. When we trust Jesus, when we really and truly trust Him with what's going on in our lives, we have hope. When we fail to trust Him, when we lose sight of Him, is when we feel hopeless. Just like Peter began to sink when he took his eyes off of Jesus, our hope begins to sink when we take our eyes off of Jesus. But when we believe in Him, When we trust in Him, when we trust His promises, when we take Him at His word, then we have real hope. And we can face the ups and downs of life with steady confidence in His goodness and wisdom. Well, we've seen the ruler's faith in Jesus and the woman's faith in Jesus and His power to heal the sick and raise the dead. Let's see that power in action now under our third and final point, a girl's resurrection. We'll look first at the commotion and then at the resurrection. The commotion is caused by the crowd who had gathered at the ruler's house. My study Bible points out that professional mourners were customarily hired to assist at funerals, usually including flute players and wailing women. So that's probably why they were able to turn on a dime from quote-unquote mourning to laughing at Jesus. To be sure, there were some in the crowd who were truly grieving, but others were there really because it was their job. And when Jesus says, go away, for the girl is not dead, but sleeping, what do they do? They laugh at him. By the way, kids, Have you ever been laughed at? You may have been, I know I have been. Jesus knows exactly what that's like. He was laughed at too. And because of that, you and I can find real comfort and refuge in him when we're laughed at. And by his enabling grace, by his power, We can learn to respond in those situations with godly character and wise love. When Jesus says, the girl is not dead but sleeping, he doesn't mean that they've got it all wrong and she didn't actually die. He means rather that her current condition of death is not final or permanent. She is merely, quote unquote, sleeping. In other words, dead but awaiting resurrection, which is how the Bible so often describes the death of the believer. For example, 1 Thessalonians 4.13, but we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about those who are asleep, that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope. So he says that she's not dead but sleeping, and the crowd laughs at him, but then this commotion gives way to a resurrection. Look at verse 25. But when the crowd had been put outside, he went in and took her by the hand, and the girl rose. And the report of this went through all that district, understandably. Mark says that he, took the child's father and mother and those who were with him and went in where the child was. Taking her by the hand, he said to her, Talitha kumi, which means little girl, I say to you, arise. And immediately the girl got up and began walking, for she was 12 years of age. And they were immediately overcome with amazement. It's really hard to imagine what this must have been like for the girl's father and mother. They were immediately overcome with amazement and I'm sure also joy and wonder and disbelief and then belief and then thankfulness and overwhelming relief and gladness because their daughter who was dead was now alive again. I bet they never got over what happened here. I bet it stamped them indelibly for the rest of their lives And may it be so with us because of the new life we've been given in Christ. Jesus, we see here, has the power not only to heal the sick but to raise the dead. All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to him, including authority over sickness and death. And this is true not just in the physical realm, we understand, but also in the spiritual realm. He has the power to heal us of our sin and to raise us to new life. Why? How? Because he took our sin and died himself in our place and rose again. The one who had the power to heal chose to die. The one who had the authority to raise from the dead rose from the dead so that all who trust in him could be healed of sin and could have new life. What Jesus did physically for the ruler and for the woman, he does spiritually for all who believe in him like they did. He heals us of the sickness of our sin, which no other physician can do. He heals us through the work of regeneration at the beginning of the Christian life, and through the work of sanctification all throughout the Christian life, and through the work of glorification at the end of the Christian life. Every day. We are being healed of our sin as we are renewed in the whole man after the image of God and are enabled more and more to die unto sin and live unto righteousness. Every day he who began a good work in us continues the good work in us until he brings it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ. In addition to healing us of our sin, he also has raised us to new life. Ephesians 2, four through six, but God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ. By grace you have been saved. And raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus. Or Romans 6, four and five. We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. Paul goes on to say, starting in verse eight, now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again. Death no longer has dominion over him. For the death he died, he died to sin once for all. But the life he lives, he lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. See, that's who we are now as Christians, as those who are united to Christ. We are dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. He has given us new life, so we should look alive. We should grow since living things grow. We shouldn't live as if we were dead to God and alive to sin, but dead to sin. and alive to God in Christ Jesus. So we've seen that Jesus has the power to heal the sick and raise the dead, both physically and spiritually. We've seen the faith of the ruler and the faith of the woman, their faith in Jesus and in his power and love. And let me just ask you as we close this evening, in view of all those things, What are you going through right now that you need to let this passage speak to? What situation or struggle or trial are you facing that needs the light of this passage to shine into it? Are you tempted to lose heart and need to take heart in light of who Jesus is? Do you need to remember again the power of Jesus to heal the sick and raise the dead? And if he has power to do that, then he has the power to help you with whatever you're facing. Is there encouragement you can draw from the fact that he has healed you of your sin, and is healing you of your sin, and will heal you of your sin? And the fact that you are no longer dead to sin, but are alive to God in Christ Jesus. Do you need to hear again the willingness of Jesus to help you? To spring out of His seat, as it were, to come to your aid? Maybe you need to be stirred awake to your need of Jesus. For salvation, if you've never come to Him in faith. Or for further sanctification, if you've sensed you've stalled out a bit. Or perhaps you need hope. Pastor Tim talked about hope this morning. You need the light of hope to shine into the darkness of doubt and despair. Whatever it is you need this evening, Jesus is the answer. Jesus is the solution. Jesus is who you need. This Jesus that we read about here in this passage who has the power and authority over sickness and death, who has love and compassion and tenderness toward us in our time of need. Let us trust him like the ruler did, like the woman did. Let us live with confidence in his power and wisdom and goodness. Let us together put all our faith and all our hope in Him. Let's pray together. Lord Jesus, we pray that you would help us to do that more and more in our lives. To put all our faith and all our hope in you and not in ourselves or in the things of this world. Thank you for healing us of our sin and for raising us from death in sin to life in you. Help us to trust you. Help us to live with confidence in your power and your wisdom and your goodness and your love for us. We pray in your name, amen. Let's take just a minute now to think and pray about what we've heard, and then we'll sing together.