So we got that unfortunate story about the hamster from the other day that I accidentally killed, and it was an accident, and I do feel terrible in the basement of my house when I was a kid. And the two big things that come out of that story for me or for our purposes are the absolute immovable truth that is death and the immovable reality that we face that is social stuff. There are things that exist in the shared hive mind culturally amongst us that are absolutely true and real, even though they're invisible. And death is invisible too until it happens. It's just this thing that lingers out there. And in Matthew chapter 9, starting in verse 18, we've been looking at this passage where both of those realities come up together. Perhaps the two most immovable objects in all of the human experience, they're both on display in this story, as we pick it up in verse 18, which says, While he, that's Jesus, was saying this at the party he was at, a ruler came and knelt before him and said, My daughter has just died, but come and put your hand on her and she will live. This is a very bold move on the part of this man who was the ruler of the synagogue, the local minister, push comes to shove. He's got to grab for the one rope of the two that he believes is actually going to hold his weight and save his life or save that which matters to him. And he grabs for the rope that is Jesus, not the rope that is the thing that he's been a part of. So Jesus doesn't say anything, he just says he got up and went with him, and so did his disciples. Just then, so we're in transit now, a woman who'd been subject to bleeding for 12 years came up behind him and touched the edge of his cloak. She said to herself, If I can only touch his cloak, I'll be healed. She's just as desperate and up against only a slightly less immovable human reality than death, in this case of physical ailment and the social constraints that come along with that. And she doesn't even want to talk to Jesus. She just wants to sneak up because she's seen all the stuff that he's done as maybe a little bit superstitious on her behalf. Maybe this is a great gesture of faith. We'll break that down as the passage unfolds here in a minute. She looks at the situation just like Jairus did. There are two ropes hanging in front of her, and she can only have time to grab one, and rather than grabbing at the one that is what has failed her in the past, medical stuff and the religious leadership of the day, she instead believes that the more trustworthy rope to grab for in desperation is the one represented by Jesus. Verse 22 said, Jesus turned and saw her. Take heart, daughter, he said, your faith has healed you. And the woman was healed from that moment. That's it. What do we get from these tiny collections of words from Jesus? Take heart, daughter. Huh, that language is familiar. I'm sure I've heard him say that lately. Flipping, flipping. Yep, he did say that lately in the very same chapter. Remember when Jesus first comes back into Capernaum after going and being rejected by the people of the Gadarenes, where he cast out the demons, and he comes back, he gets in the boat, he crosses over, comes to Capernaum across the Sea of Galilee, and some men bring that guy, the paralytic, in front of him while Jesus is teaching and he sees their faith. Wow, this is such a similar formula. And because he sees their faith, he says to the paralytic, Take heart son, your sins are forgiven. How about that? There's this mercy that is on display, and we get both the phrase, take heart son and take heart daughter within just a couple of paragraphs of each other. Well, paragraphs in the English rendering of each other. I don't think that's an accident. I think what Matthew is doing is he's arranging these stories in such a way, not just to demonstrate Jesus' authority, but to demonstrate once again this is for everybody. I mean, how long have we been talking about the idea that to become a citizen of the kingdom is to acknowledge that Jesus is provider and king and authority over everything and master over everything, and that to become a citizen of the kingdom isn't just to become a mildly vested red shirt of the kingdom. It's to become a son, a daughter, an heir. And he literally uses the language take heart son, take heart daughter, in response to these desperate acts of faith, these almost humiliating acts of faith, these risky acts of faith that these people are taking. I promise you, paralytic dude could not have given you a theological breakdown of all the ins and outs about God's sovereignty and human freedom and all the debates that Christians have fought about for all of the years. All he did was look at world system stuff that seemed to be really impotent to deal with his situation, and kingdom system stuff that he only partially understood, but looked like it might be able to do something about his situation. And so he threw his energy there. This lady does the exact same math over a physical problem as well as a social problem, again, just like the dude. Physical problem, his legs, social problem, abstract problem, if you want to put it that way. Fact that there's guilt associated with it. And people assume that he or his parents or somebody did something bad or he wouldn't be in that situation. In both cases, the forgiveness, the healing, the restoration that comes through Jesus is one that is courage giving. Take heart. Stuff's okay. Everything that seems broken and ruined and impossible and immovable is fixable and can be unspoiled and restored and made better than it ever was in the first place. And the woman was healed from that moment. So in a moment, this lady's fortunes are flipped. She's no longer dealing with this physical affliction that has been a nightmare. But further, she's relieved of all of the social yuck and pressures and exclusion that's gone with that, and apparently is received back into the community and able to be a human again. So what I think is beautiful about this is in a collection of anecdotes that demonstrate Jesus' raw, shocking, powerful authority over everything, we're also seeing his intimate compassion for the actual humans. That guy, this girl, they're not pawns. They're not object lessons to be trotted out the way politicians and presidents do at State of the Union addresses. That guy's just window dressing. He's here to make me look good, but I'm gonna make it look like it's about you. Jesus seems to have actually cared about these people. Take heart. I'm gonna resolve this affliction. So then that might raise the question: well, if he cared about these people, why didn't he do it for everybody? Why didn't he just snap his fingers and make everything better about everything so nobody would have bleeding problems? Like surely there was someone else alive at this time who had been bleeding for years and years and couldn't hang out with people. Surely other people's kids died, surely there were other crippled people. Why didn't he just solve it all? Well, I think the well, I think the biblical answer to that hypothetical question is he is solving all of that. He's just not doing it all at once. And that might seem unfair and incomplete, but again, remember, rationally, for God to get rid of all the suffering and all the evil, he would have to get rid of all of the agents of suffering, which would be you and me and everybody. There's this redemptive moment that is playing out that's being described here in the Bible, where God is tolerating things that everyone agrees are not good and not fun and destructive and even deeply hurtful, while he goes about the business of redeeming as much as he deems necessary for him to redeem. I, for one, am very grateful that in this exact moment, as he's walking around Capernaum, he did not end all suffering because that means that there never would have been a me. We would have been into the next phase of things, and me, a potential agent of suffering and evil, never would have been brought into the world or existed, and neither would you. And I'm really glad that you're here as well. And so what we see is Jesus' forbearance on display here. What we see is something that could be viewed as not fair because he didn't do it for everybody in this moment. But I think it just as easily could be viewed, and based on the text, Matthew's trying to get us to view it as something that points to this resolution that everything in Matthew's been talking about, dating back to the prophets of the Old Testament. There's this resolution that is at hand, that the ugly stuff is getting straightened out, the suffering and the ick and the things that are broken are being resolved, that the mourning and sadness is being resolved, even the beatitudes at the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount point toward there being this resolution for these things that have been hurting people and lingering for so long. And so these tiny little anecdotes, on the one hand, demonstrate Jesus' unbelievable authority. You know, you've heard the saying, she's got more knowledge in her pinky finger than I'll have in my whole life on that subject. Well, it's kind of the deal here. Like, Jesus has got more power to resolve human suffering in the corner of his jacket than all of human government and wisdom and knowledge and practice combined. This is an amazing demonstration of authority. But it's not just about the authority. It's also about the fact that he has compassion for his subjects, compassion for the people over whom he has authority. And with his reign comes stuff that looks really, really good. And we didn't make it the rest of the way down the street to find out what happens with the dead girl. Guess we'll get to that tomorrow. Thanks for slowly chewing through this passage with me. I think there's a lot of layers here and a lot of humanity to it. And sometimes I like to kind of pump the brakes and roll through it real, real slow, like we're doing here. I appreciate you all so very much. Thanks for making it possible for me to do this. I'm Matt. This is the 10 minute Bible hour. Let's do this again soon.