SPEAKER_00: Hey guys, welcome to the Haven City Church Podcast.
SPEAKER_00: My name is Pastor Josh Taransky.
SPEAKER_00: Uh the following sermon was recorded on April 29th, 2018.
SPEAKER_00: We're looking at Luke chapter 7.
SPEAKER_00: Appreciate you tuning in.
SPEAKER_00: We're in a new church in Fells Point, Baltimore.
SPEAKER_00: For more information about the church, you can go to www.baltimorechurch.com.
SPEAKER_00: You can visit with us on Sundays at 10 a.m.
SPEAKER_00: And you can find us on social media by looking up Haven City Church.
SPEAKER_00: God bless.
SPEAKER_00: Luke chapter 8.
SPEAKER_00: We're going to read 26 through 39, right?
SPEAKER_00: So the slides will be up here if you don't have it in front of you.
SPEAKER_00: We also have free Bibles over here if you didn't get one.
SPEAKER_00: You can always grab a Bible on the way in.
SPEAKER_00: But I'm going to have the text up here.
SPEAKER_00: We're just because this is a long text, we're going to just break it into chunks.
SPEAKER_00: So let's read Luke 8, 26 through 39.
SPEAKER_00: It says they sailed to the region of Gerezenes, which is across the lake from Galilee.
SPEAKER_00: When Jesus stepped ashore, he was met by a demon-possessed man from the town.
SPEAKER_00: For a long time this man had not worn clothes or lived in a house, but he had lived in tombs.
SPEAKER_00: When he saw Jesus, he cried out and fell at his feet, shouting at the top of his voice, What do you want with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God?
SPEAKER_00: I beg you, don't torture me.
SPEAKER_00: For Jesus had commanded the impure spirit to come out of the man.
SPEAKER_00: Many times it had seized him, and though he was chained hand in foot and kept under guard, he had broken his chains and had been driven by the demon into solitary places.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus asked him, What's your name?
SPEAKER_00: Legion, he replied, because many demons had gone into him, and they begged Jesus repeatedly not to order them to go into the abyss.
SPEAKER_00: A large herd of pigs was feeding there on the hillside.
SPEAKER_00: The demons begged Jesus to let them go into the pigs.
SPEAKER_00: He gave them permission.
SPEAKER_00: When the demons came out of the man, they went into the pigs, and the herd rushed down the steep bank into the lake and was drowned.
SPEAKER_00: When these tending the pigs saw what had happened, they ran off and reported this in the town and countryside, and the people went out to see what had happened.
SPEAKER_00: When they came to Jesus they found the man from whom the demons had gone out sitting at Jesus' feet, dressed and in his right mind, and they were afraid.
SPEAKER_00: Those who had seen it told the people how the demon-possessed man had been cured.
SPEAKER_00: Then all the people of the region of the Gerezenes asked Jesus to leave them, because they were overcome with fear.
SPEAKER_00: So he got into the boat and left.
SPEAKER_00: The man from whom the demons had gone out begged to go with him, but Jesus sent him away, saying, Return home, tell how much God has done for you.
SPEAKER_00: So the man went away and told all went away and told all over town how much Jesus had done for him.
SPEAKER_00: Let's pray.
SPEAKER_00: God, as we look into this text and this account and the next one as well, we just want to yield ourselves to the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, we pray that you would speak to us by your spirit.
SPEAKER_00: You know everything that's gone on in our lives this week.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, you know the crisis in our life.
SPEAKER_00: You know the need.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, you know the sin, Lord, that we've committed.
SPEAKER_00: And God, we offer all that before you.
SPEAKER_00: We are people that need mercy.
SPEAKER_00: We need your work in our life.
SPEAKER_00: We need your direction and your guidance.
SPEAKER_00: So somehow, God, would you take this text and our time this morning at church and our conversations with other people and our worship and taking communion, Lord, would you take all of these things that we're doing here and speak to us?
SPEAKER_00: Lord, as followers of you, speak to us, we pray in Jesus' name.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: So crazy story, right?
SPEAKER_00: This is a crazy story.
SPEAKER_00: When you look at what is going on with Jesus in uh Gerezenes, it's just one of the most bizarre accounts.
SPEAKER_00: As I looked through this uh during the week and was trying to prepare the sermon, I kept getting stuck on just the fact that this is hilarious.
SPEAKER_00: Um not the man's condition, but just the bizarress of this, right?
SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's just weird that Jesus does all this and the people in the local town see it, and they will tell Jesus to go away, right?
SPEAKER_00: I mean, isn't that weird that they like they don't want Jesus around after he like fixes one of their major social issues at this time?
SPEAKER_00: But before we look at the actual account, and we're gonna spend some time, we're gonna do like a biblical theology on what are fallen angels, devils, and demons.
SPEAKER_00: We're gonna look at what Jesus does here in this case, and then we're gonna look at Jairus' daughter and the woman with blood.
SPEAKER_00: So we got a lot of ground to cover, but really quickly, on um the next slide just shows an um article, and this was in the Washington Post in um July 1st, 2016.
SPEAKER_00: Richard Gallagher wrote this account.
SPEAKER_00: He's a board-certified psychiatrist and a professor of clinical psychiatry at New York Medical College.
SPEAKER_00: In one of the paragraphs from this article says this I am a man of science and a lover of history.
SPEAKER_00: After studying the classics at Princeton, I trained in psychiatry at Yale and in psychoanalysis at Columbia.
SPEAKER_00: That background is why a Catholic priest had asked my professional opinion, which I offered pro bono, whether this woman, he's already explained to early in the article, whether this woman was sufficient or suffering from a mental disorder.
SPEAKER_00: My subjects' behavior exceeded what I could explain with my training.
SPEAKER_00: She could tell some people their secret weaknesses, such as undue pride.
SPEAKER_00: She knew how individuals she had never known had died, including my mother and her fatal case of ovarian cancer.
SPEAKER_00: Six people later vouched to me that during her exorcisms, they heard her speaking multiple languages, including Latin, completely unfamiliar to her outside of her trances.
SPEAKER_00: This was not psychosis, it is what it is what can only be described as paranormal ability.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, right after this article was written, this man uh was a speaker for the Archdiocese of Baltimore at a Catholic convention here back in 2016 where they had a hundred bishops get together just to talk about what do we do with demonic uh possession.
SPEAKER_00: And there's this need felt amongst the Catholic Church to have more and more bishops trained to be able to diagnose demonic possession and uh how to do an exorcism.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, I think I saw it in the news just in the last couple of months that the Catholic Church has classified this as a crisis that not enough of their bishops know how to do an exorcism.
SPEAKER_00: It's amazing.
SPEAKER_00: You know, here in the in the West, we do not encounter uh very many overt cases of demonic uh possession.
SPEAKER_00: Whereas when I've gone on the mission field, whether it's in South America or over in Africa, it is uh a little bit more overt where it's pretty clear, like this person here has something beyond just a mental disorder, it's an actual uh other being filling this person and speaking through them.
SPEAKER_00: It's um obviously not uh healthy, it's not God's will for those people, and so what I want to do is just take this text that we're looking at, and what I just want to um draw out some conclusions because the Bible speaks 52 times throughout the New Testament about demons, and uh I think it's 23 references to unclean spirits.
SPEAKER_00: So it's it is a it's a real thing, it's important to understand.
SPEAKER_00: So it's just really quickly on the screen here, we've got uh four observations that we can make from this text just about demons.
SPEAKER_00: First of all, when we look at this story, we see that a demon or multiple demons can possess humans and animals.
SPEAKER_00: Second, we see those demons can control the individual's actions, including speaking for them.
SPEAKER_00: Third, we see that demons feared being tortured and sent into the abyss.
SPEAKER_00: And fourth, the demons recognize that Jesus has authority over them.
SPEAKER_00: Now, if you're like me reading this text, you got a lot of questions.
SPEAKER_00: Like, where did these demons come from?
SPEAKER_00: Like, and what's the difference between demons and fallen angels, right?
SPEAKER_00: Or why are they fearing the abyss?
SPEAKER_00: Or why do they have why is it like you can either go to the abyss or the pigs?
SPEAKER_00: Why are those the two options, right?
SPEAKER_00: Like, isn't that weird?
SPEAKER_00: Uh it's a bizarre account.
SPEAKER_00: Uh and here's the point Jesus is the main uh hero of the story throughout the Bible.
SPEAKER_00: The Bible isn't written so that we know everything possible there is to know about demons and fallen angels and the devil, but it gives us what we need to know.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: The Bible is one of the things that we believe about the Bible is that it's sufficient.
SPEAKER_00: It gives us what we need to know.
SPEAKER_00: And so the Bible tells us that these demons are real.
SPEAKER_00: If we go on into the New Testament, we've already seen when we were studying Luke earlier in the year, Luke chapter 4, there was this account when Jesus went into the synagogue, and there was a man who was possessed by a demon, and there that demon is also called an impure spirit.
SPEAKER_00: He cried out at the top of his voice, that's 33, then chapter 4, 34 says, Go away.
SPEAKER_00: What do you want with us, Jesus of Nazareth?
SPEAKER_00: Have you come to destroy us?
SPEAKER_00: It seems like there's this opportunity that Jesus has to like destroy the demons.
SPEAKER_00: I know who you are, holy one of God.
SPEAKER_00: So there's another thing that we could just look at and say, the demons clearly know who Jesus is, right?
SPEAKER_00: So Jesus casts out this demon in Luke chapter 4.
SPEAKER_00: Now, in um a couple weeks, we'll be in Luke 9.
SPEAKER_00: And um there's another account here in Luke 9, 37.
SPEAKER_00: It says, Now it happened on the day when they had come down from the mountain that a great multitude met him.
SPEAKER_00: Suddenly a man uh from the multitude cried out and said, Teacher, I implore you to look on my son.
SPEAKER_00: He is my only child.
SPEAKER_00: Behold, a spirit seizes him and he suddenly cries out.
SPEAKER_00: He convulses, right?
SPEAKER_00: And so the story goes on, and Jesus casts this demon out of this boy.
SPEAKER_00: So there are multiple accounts as we go through the life of Jesus, where Jesus is delivering people from demons.
SPEAKER_00: We also see that Jesus had twelve apostles, uh, he had a bunch of followers, and on one occasion he had 72 disciples that he sent out away from him around in the surrounding cities to do ministry just like he had been doing.
SPEAKER_00: And one of the things that Jesus gives to his disciples is the power to cast out demons, right?
SPEAKER_00: So this is a part of Jesus' ministry is this power to cast out demons.
SPEAKER_00: Now, the devil is also spoken of throughout the scripture.
SPEAKER_00: We've where do we first encounter the devil?
SPEAKER_00: Where do we first encounter Satan?
SPEAKER_00: In the garden, right?
SPEAKER_00: Right at Genesis chapter 3, we have the devil taking on the form of a snake or possessing a snake, uh, tempting Eve and Adam to eat the forbidden fruit.
SPEAKER_00: Demons are not Satan.
SPEAKER_00: There's a distinction in Matthew 12, 23, where Satan, who is called in that case Beelzebub, he's called the prince of demons or the ruler of demons.
SPEAKER_00: So there's a difference.
SPEAKER_00: These demons probably are the one-third of the angels that fell and rebelled under Lucifer, Satan's leadership, maybe even before creation, or subsequent, right subsequent to creation, early on there.
SPEAKER_00: There's different views on that.
SPEAKER_00: But a third of the angels fell.
SPEAKER_00: So you have fallen angels, and then the question is, well, what is a demonic spirit?
SPEAKER_00: What's an unclean spirit?
SPEAKER_00: And we don't know.
SPEAKER_00: One um group suggests that demons are disembodied fallen angels, right?
SPEAKER_00: So fallen angels are sent to the abyss, but some are disembodied spirits that are allowed to roam the earth and do Satan's bidding.
SPEAKER_00: But we're getting into some speculation there on whether or not that is the case.
SPEAKER_00: Um here's the big question, though.
SPEAKER_00: Can demons or a demon possess a Christian in the way that we saw in our story?
SPEAKER_00: And I want to put up here on the screen two specific verses that answer this question.
SPEAKER_00: Can a demon be in a in a Christian?
SPEAKER_00: 1 John 4, 4 says this You dear children are from God and have overcome then, because the one who is in you, who's the one that's in you?
SPEAKER_00: That's God, right?
SPEAKER_00: When you become a Christian, the Holy Spirit comes into you.
SPEAKER_00: John says, the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world.
SPEAKER_00: Who's in the world?
SPEAKER_00: Well, if you've read through the whole Bible, you know that God, when when Satan rebelled against God, that God cast Satan out of heaven to the earth, and Satan is the prince of the earth.
SPEAKER_00: He's the prince of the air.
SPEAKER_00: His domain is this world that we live in.
SPEAKER_00: Remember when Jesus is tempted by Satan, Satan says to Jesus, If you will worship me, I will give you authority over this whole earth.
SPEAKER_00: Well, why can Satan say that?
SPEAKER_00: Well, because the authority had been given to him.
SPEAKER_00: So Satan is the prince of the air, the prince of the world.
SPEAKER_00: So John says that God is in you, and that God who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world.
SPEAKER_00: Also, Colossians 1, 13 and 14 says, For he has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son, He loves, in whom we have redemption and forgiveness of sins.
SPEAKER_00: So we no longer are in the dominion of darkness.
SPEAKER_00: We're not in Satan's realm any longer.
SPEAKER_00: When Jesus died on the cross for our sins, it says in 1 Corinthians that he purchased us, he purchased our body.
SPEAKER_00: Our body is the temple of the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: You've heard that before, right?
SPEAKER_00: That we are the temple of the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: So we are a vessel, just like the pigs are a vessel, just like this demoniac in the tomb was a vessel.
SPEAKER_00: We are a vessel that is owned by God, right?
SPEAKER_00: When we placed our faith in Jesus Christ and we gave him our life, then the purchase price for us was his blood on the cross, and we no longer belong to ourselves, Paul says, but we belong to God.
SPEAKER_00: So you and I do not have to fear an indwelling of a satanic spirit, but satanic attacks and oppression are still a reality.
SPEAKER_00: All throughout the New Testament, we see that Satan is battling against God's saints.
SPEAKER_00: So it's going to be a the case is going to be for you and I that there is an unseen world that's going on this week where there are demons, demonic spirits that are fighting against you, flourishing in your relationship with God and accomplishing the purposes that God has for you.
SPEAKER_00: That's crazy, huh?
SPEAKER_00: That's the very real reality.
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
SPEAKER_00: God created angels who are volitional beings, right?
SPEAKER_00: They have their own uh ability to make decisions.
SPEAKER_00: They're not um robots, but they're created to minister to the saints and protect us as humans.
SPEAKER_00: So angels are going to also be this work this week around you, working on your behalf, fighting this battle, protecting you.
SPEAKER_00: Um and God is looking for you to stand strong and to trust in him to be our great deliverer.
SPEAKER_00: So saying all that about demons, let's jump in for just a second into this actual story.
SPEAKER_00: This account is given three times uh in Matthew, Mark, and Luke.
SPEAKER_00: Matthew 8, 28, Mark 5, uh give you the other accounts.
SPEAKER_00: In Mark and Matthew, there are two men that are possessed.
SPEAKER_00: Uh and in this case, here Luke just gives us an account of one individual.
SPEAKER_00: Probably because remember, Luke, when he wrote this, he was trying to verify his sources.
SPEAKER_00: So he was like a journalist.
SPEAKER_00: He only put into his book what he could verify as reliable.
SPEAKER_00: So here there's one man who is um uh naked.
SPEAKER_00: It says that he's been restrained.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, um in Mark 5, here's what it says, uh here's how these guys are described, right?
SPEAKER_00: It says Jesus got out of the boat, a man with an impure spirit came from the tombs to meet him.
SPEAKER_00: This man lived in the tombs, and no one could bind him any more, not even with a chain, for he had often been changed hand and foot, but he tore the chains apart and broke the irons on his feet.
SPEAKER_00: No one was strong enough to subdue him night and day among the tombs and in the hills, he would cry out, cut himself, uh cut himself with stones.
SPEAKER_00: Can you imagine having this guy live in your neighborhood?
SPEAKER_00: What a drag, you know?
SPEAKER_00: I mean, that would really diminish your property values, I think.
SPEAKER_00: You know, this would really stink, having having this.
SPEAKER_00: And and like they've tried to deal with it.
SPEAKER_00: Like, oh, go, you know, you gotta go chain Bob up again.
SPEAKER_00: You know, whose turn is it to go and watch Bob?
SPEAKER_00: You know, we gotta make sure that he stays over there, right?
SPEAKER_00: And there's, oh no, Bob broke out of his chains again.
SPEAKER_00: What are we gonna do?
SPEAKER_00: Like that that's like he's institutionalized, but he keeps breaking out of the institution.
SPEAKER_00: It's so, so sad.
SPEAKER_00: But in Luke chapter 8, right at the end of the story, what do we see?
SPEAKER_00: We see they went out to see.
SPEAKER_00: So this man's delivered, and and kind of like the pinnacle verse is verse 35 in Luke 8.
SPEAKER_00: They went out to see what had happened.
SPEAKER_00: They came to Jesus, they find the man from whom the demons had departed sitting at the feet of Jesus, clothed and in his right mind, and they were afraid.
SPEAKER_00: So that the town comes out to see this, and here is this man.
SPEAKER_00: Now imagine like the great lengths that the town has gone to to try to just to cope.
SPEAKER_00: I do you think that they really even had any hope that this man would like change?
SPEAKER_00: It seems like their their remedy was just like, let's just try to hold him back.
SPEAKER_00: Like, let's try to just keep him from attacking us and disrupting us in the middle of the night.
SPEAKER_00: Like, if we could just just do that, they seem to be happy.
SPEAKER_00: But by the end of the passage, we have this complete reversal.
SPEAKER_00: Put the um the next uh chart up here.
SPEAKER_00: Just this really quickly.
SPEAKER_00: Look, before Jesus comes along, we have a man who is demon-possessed, but then afterwards we have a man from whom the demons departed.
SPEAKER_00: That's literally the text.
SPEAKER_00: That's the phrase that is used.
SPEAKER_00: That's how he's described.
SPEAKER_00: It's a man from whom the demons had departed.
SPEAKER_00: Then we have the fact that he was once naked, but then we get to verse 35.
SPEAKER_00: He is clothed, he's wearing clothes.
SPEAKER_00: Then third, we have once unruly and shouting, and and then we get over to afterwards, now he's sitting at the feet of Jesus in his right mind.
SPEAKER_00: Before he's not living in a house, but that at the end of the story he sends the man away to go back to his home.
SPEAKER_00: It's amazing, even just the fact that he's naked doing this.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, when as we're working here in Baltimore, one of the things that that poverty and and um just just the um the ravages of sin and the frailty of humanity, like it it strips people of clothes.
SPEAKER_00: And so the ability through the compassion center to just give people back some clothes, what you're doing by doing that is you're giving them back a piece of their humanity, right?
SPEAKER_00: You're giving them back a piece of the dignity that God wants for them to have.
SPEAKER_00: I love Albert's story of like, you gotta ask him about the the sharp dressed man when you get a chance.
SPEAKER_00: Because all they do is they help men get nice suits so that they can be dressed for work and to to get out and um to just to be functioning within society.
SPEAKER_00: Because being dressed is a part of.
SPEAKER_00: Functioning well in society.
SPEAKER_00: It adds to our humanity.
SPEAKER_00: Can you believe that Jesus shows up and he does all of that?
SPEAKER_00: It's amazing.
SPEAKER_00: It's amazing to me that this is who Jesus is.
SPEAKER_00: So, what can we draw away from this?
SPEAKER_00: What are kind of like what are some of the obvious things?
SPEAKER_00: Well, first of all, demonic activity is real.
SPEAKER_00: It's real to this day.
SPEAKER_00: And I would suggest that it's more real, you go to other countries and you'll see it more prevalently.
SPEAKER_00: But from what I'm understanding, it's it's becoming more and more apparent even within Western culture.
SPEAKER_00: I know that we work with a couple of individuals where it has crossed my mind in my interactions with them, where I've thought that person's behavior is so bizarre, especially in changing voices.
SPEAKER_00: When you have a person who seems to radically shift um from in personalities on the fly and be dramatically hostile to God off the cuff, it has made me wonder.
SPEAKER_00: I wonder if there's a demonic thing that's going on there.
SPEAKER_00: We also can just see that human efforts are ineffective in this arena.
SPEAKER_00: I love the story about this psychiatrist who, for two um 25 years, he goes on in his story in the Washington Post to just say, look, he has part of his job has been to diagnose possession.
SPEAKER_00: He says, I don't officially diagnose it, but I say this is a phenomenon that is outside the realm of normal psychiatry, of what I can diagnose.
SPEAKER_00: And then you gotta love the fact that Jesus is the only authority that demons respond to, right?
SPEAKER_00: The demons flee.
SPEAKER_00: All right, let's go into the next um the next story.
SPEAKER_00: We've got the text up here, starting in verse 40.
SPEAKER_00: It says this Now when Jesus returned, a crowd welcomed him, for they were all expecting him.
SPEAKER_00: Then a man named Jairus, a synagogue leader, came and fell at Jesus' feet, pleading with him to come to his house, because his only daughter, a girl about twelve, was dying.
SPEAKER_00: As Jesus was on his way, the crowds almost crushed him.
SPEAKER_00: And a woman was there who had been subject to bleeding for twelve years, but no one could heal her.
SPEAKER_00: She came up behind him and touched the edge of his cloak, and immediately her bleeding stopped.
SPEAKER_00: Who touched me?
SPEAKER_00: Jesus asked.
SPEAKER_00: When they all denied it, Peter said, Master, the people are crowding and pressing against you.
SPEAKER_00: But Jesus said, Someone touched me, I know that power has gone from me.
SPEAKER_00: Then the woman, seeing that she could not go unnoticed, came, trembling, fell at his feet in the presence of all the people.
SPEAKER_00: She told uh why she had touched him and how she had been instantly healed.
SPEAKER_00: Then he said to her, Daughter, your faith has healed you.
SPEAKER_00: Go in peace.
SPEAKER_00: While Jesus was still speaking, someone came from the house of Jairus, the synagogue leader.
SPEAKER_00: Your daughter is dead, he said.
SPEAKER_00: Don't bother the teacher anymore.
SPEAKER_00: Hearing this, Jesus said to Jairus, Don't be afraid, just believe, and she will be healed.
SPEAKER_00: When he arrived at the house of Jairus, he did not let anyone go in with him except Peter, John, and James, and the child's father and mother.
SPEAKER_00: Meanwhile, all the people who were wailing and mourning for her stopped wailing.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus said, She is not dead, but asleep.
SPEAKER_00: They laughed at him, knowing that Jesus or that she was dead, but he took her by the hand and said, My child, get up.
SPEAKER_00: Her spirit returned, and at once she stood up.
SPEAKER_00: Then Jesus told them to give her something to eat.
SPEAKER_00: Her parents were astonished, but he ordered them not to tell anyone what had happened.
SPEAKER_00: So we've got like this is like the Russian dolls type.
SPEAKER_00: We've got like a story within a story, right?
SPEAKER_00: So we first encounter Gyrus, which we're gonna actually look at his story second.
SPEAKER_00: Let's look at the woman with the issue of blood.
SPEAKER_00: So she has this ongoing um bleeding.
SPEAKER_00: Um in the account of Mark, it says that she suffered many things by physicians.
SPEAKER_00: And Mark's account of the story says also that she spent all of her money looking for a cure, but it was only getting worse.
SPEAKER_00: So what this would have practically meant for her, other than just the discomfort and uh the frustration of it, um, and we don't know how much pain she may have been in from this, but she would have been ceremonially unclean, so so and she would, and which would have made her socially cut off.
SPEAKER_00: So this woman for 12 years had been in a position where she could not have uh friends, Jewish friends.
SPEAKER_00: Uh she couldn't um go and worship at the temple, she couldn't participate in the Jewish festivals.
SPEAKER_00: Um as a Jew, she would have been looked on as a person who was cut off from the presence of God.
SPEAKER_00: And yet here she comes through the crowd and she's able to grab a hold of these tassels.
SPEAKER_00: Now, a tassel was, even to this day, you see some Orthodox Jews with like the threads that are hanging down, right?
SPEAKER_00: Well, that's um that's the idea of what um what this woman grabbed a hold of.
SPEAKER_00: And by grabbing a hold of those tassels, she's healed.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus senses somehow in himself that that power has gone out of him, and she knows, it says in this account or in Mark's account that she can tell within her that she's healed.
SPEAKER_00: It's an amazing account.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus turns to her and he says, Your faith hath made you whole.
SPEAKER_00: So here's the question for you What's the deal with the grabbing the tassel?
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: Like what is that?
SPEAKER_00: What does it mean?
SPEAKER_00: And and and here's the difficult thing is that that when we go through suffering and we go through sickness that's associated, or suffering that's associated with sickness, we become a desperate people, right?
SPEAKER_00: And and when we look at these accounts, there can be this desire to just kind of grab a hold of like these different things in hopes of like, well, maybe that's how I'll get healed.
SPEAKER_00: I would suggest to you the tassels weren't all that special, but what Jesus is often doing with people is he's um giving their faith a point of contact, something that they can um do to respond or to evidence their faith.
SPEAKER_00: There is kind of a teaching, a false teaching within the church that's um called a health and wealth movement.
SPEAKER_00: It teaches that God's plan for you is for to be wealthy, um, to be healthy, always be healthy, to never be sick, um, and that if you're experiencing those things, it's a lack of faith in your life.
SPEAKER_00: And then to make that teaching all that much more worse, the pastors that teach that will say, you need to express your faith by giving to the church.
SPEAKER_00: That is that is the most wicked.
SPEAKER_00: I can't, I'm not allowed to cuss because I'm a pastor, but that is the most wicked teaching, right?
SPEAKER_00: That is so manipulative.
SPEAKER_00: First of all, the Bible teaches that people get sick, and that's a part of God's plan.
SPEAKER_00: Paul lived with a sickness.
SPEAKER_00: Paul lived with an eyesore from his first missionary journey on.
SPEAKER_00: He probably got malaria when he went through a high mountain region, and his eyes plagued him for the rest of his ministry.
SPEAKER_00: He he um even writes at the end of Galatians that, hey, I'm writing the end of this book, I'm signing it, and you can see how big the letters are.
SPEAKER_00: Probably he's signing it with these big letters because he can barely see out of his eyes.
SPEAKER_00: He uses somebody else to do the writing for him.
SPEAKER_00: So um, all of that to say, all of that to say, the um plan of God for your and my life is not health and wealth, it's his glory and his victory.
SPEAKER_00: So he does.
SPEAKER_00: So here's the problem you've got this group that has this terribly bad teaching that the problems in your life they're just a result of your lack of faith, right?
SPEAKER_00: Then you feel condemned.
SPEAKER_00: You're like, oh, my I don't have enough faith.
SPEAKER_00: You know, if I just had enough faith, my life would get better.
SPEAKER_00: You know, this person's dying and I don't have enough faith.
SPEAKER_00: Like that's that's the worst thing.
SPEAKER_00: Then it puts all the responsibility on you.
SPEAKER_00: When God died on the cross to put all the responsibility on him, right?
SPEAKER_00: No, the teaching of Scripture about faith is that God does want to work.
SPEAKER_00: We don't know how.
SPEAKER_00: And the measure of our faith is to be in response to what God shows us.
SPEAKER_00: The measure of faith, the amount of faith that you and I are to have is to the degree of revelation that God has shown us.
SPEAKER_00: So if God's shown you, you think God's shown you this person is going to be healed, then you should believe that that person's going to be healed.
SPEAKER_00: At the same time, no, you may make a mistake.
SPEAKER_00: If he doesn't get healed, then who's wrong?
SPEAKER_00: God or you?
SPEAKER_00: You.
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
SPEAKER_00: You're wrong, right?
SPEAKER_00: So, but we're called to be a people that believe God.
SPEAKER_00: And and here's the thing.
SPEAKER_00: I've had people that have looked at some steps that I've taken in my life and been critical and been like, you know, that can't be the Lord, right?
SPEAKER_00: And to me, I've felt like it's God's leading and guidance.
SPEAKER_00: And ultimately those those things have actually panned out, and it seemed like it's been the Lord that I took those steps.
SPEAKER_00: But here's the thing.
SPEAKER_00: I would rather be a person that sometimes gets it wrong, sometimes believes God, but but didn't actually discern God's will correctly, but at least I was believing God, right?
SPEAKER_00: I'd rather be that person than the one sitting on the sidelines watching Christians do life and kind of be like the hobg guy, you know, like, eh, I don't think God's gonna work.
SPEAKER_00: I don't think God said that.
SPEAKER_00: You know, I'll believe it when I see it.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe it kind of reminds you of Thomas, right?
SPEAKER_00: This woman, she believes that Jesus can heal her, and she takes a risk.
SPEAKER_00: She goes and grabs on to this tassel and she's healed.
SPEAKER_00: So it's an interesting demonstration of her faith.
SPEAKER_00: I would encourage you.
SPEAKER_00: It says in Hebrews that God is pleased through our life of faith.
SPEAKER_00: So that's why we ought to be a people that are willing to err on the side of faith and make mistakes sometimes, rather than be the conservative ones who are like, I don't know, I don't know really if that's the Lord or not.
SPEAKER_00: I think we should be people that are walking by faith.
SPEAKER_00: Now, let's finish off by talking about Jairus' daughter.
SPEAKER_00: So here's Jairus' daughter.
SPEAKER_00: What do we see about him?
SPEAKER_00: Jairus is the leader of a synagogue in Capernaum.
SPEAKER_00: What's Capernaum?
SPEAKER_00: This is one of the most popular cities that Jesus has been doing ministry in, right?
SPEAKER_00: So Jesus is there.
SPEAKER_00: And some of the more pointed conflicts that Jesus has had have been in the synagogue.
SPEAKER_00: And yet, here is Jairus reaching out for Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: You gotta wonder if maybe Jairus in the past had not liked Jesus, but now he's in this crisis and he's more open to an encounter with faith.
SPEAKER_00: But here he is, he's got a daughter, interesting, 12 years old, a little bit over 12 years old, whereas the woman had an issue for 12 years.
SPEAKER_00: Here's the daughter with, I don't know what the connection is there, but both 12 years, right?
SPEAKER_00: And she's dying.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, she does die.
SPEAKER_00: Um and Jesus comes and he heals her, right?
SPEAKER_00: He has an interesting interaction with um the crowd.
SPEAKER_00: And the point at which Jesus talks about faith in this story is Jesus heals the woman with the issue of blood.
SPEAKER_00: The other people rush up and they say to Jairus, stop bugging Jesus, don't bother him anymore.
SPEAKER_00: Your daughter has died.
SPEAKER_00: Which seems like the way it's written seems so curt and um dispassionate.
SPEAKER_00: But who knows?
SPEAKER_00: Umbe it was said a little bit nicer.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe there's a little bit more bedside manner.
SPEAKER_00: Um but the whole like stop bothering Jesus thing is just like, what's up with that?
SPEAKER_00: That's so mean.
SPEAKER_00: Um, your daughter just died, stop bothering the guy.
SPEAKER_00: You know, it's like that's terrible.
SPEAKER_00: But anyway, Jesus turns to Jairus and he says, Don't be afraid, just believe.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: So here's the point.
SPEAKER_00: Here's where Jesus is telling the man, here's the measure of faith that you need.
SPEAKER_00: You need to not be afraid and you need to just believe.
SPEAKER_00: Ultimately, um, the girl is raised up.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus says, get her some food.
SPEAKER_00: They're astonished.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus tells them, don't tell anyone.
SPEAKER_00: It's amazing because Jesus sent the demoniac home and said, Go tell everybody, right?
SPEAKER_00: You can't follow me.
SPEAKER_00: You can't get in the boat with me, go tell everyone.
SPEAKER_00: But then the daughters heal, he says, Don't tell anyone, right?
SPEAKER_00: Here's the thing the demoniac was in a gentile area.
SPEAKER_00: And so there's this missionary act that the uh man formerly possessed by a demon does, but yet with the Jews, there's this um, let we can keep this a secret.
SPEAKER_00: It's not yet my time, right?
SPEAKER_00: So, wrapping this all up, there's one more verse I want to put up here on the screen, which I believe is John 16, 33.
SPEAKER_00: As I was looking through this whole thing, this is what it reminded me of.
SPEAKER_00: John tells his disciples, I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace.
SPEAKER_00: You will have suffering in this world.
SPEAKER_00: Wait, wait, wait, wait, what?
SPEAKER_00: Does that sound like the health and wealth message?
SPEAKER_00: No, he's Jesus says, You will have suffering in this world.
SPEAKER_00: It's a promise.
SPEAKER_00: You will have suffering.
SPEAKER_00: Be of good courage or be courageous.
SPEAKER_00: I have conquered the world.
SPEAKER_00: This verse is displayed in this whole text that we're looking at.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus is the conqueror, right?
SPEAKER_00: He's the demon slayer.
SPEAKER_00: He's the heat, the hero of the story.
SPEAKER_00: He's the one that's healing a woman with this issue of blood.
SPEAKER_00: He's the one that's raising up a dead 12-year-old.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, Jesus is amazing, and he tells his disciples that they need to have peace.
SPEAKER_00: I've told you these things so that you will have peace.
SPEAKER_00: Be courageous.
SPEAKER_00: Man, when I tell you, hey, there's demons, maybe maybe demons out here, you know, there may be demons in this room.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know how demons work, you know.
SPEAKER_00: They're against you.
SPEAKER_00: They're opposed to your flourishing.
SPEAKER_00: John 10 says that the thief, Satan, comes to steal, kill, and destroy.
SPEAKER_00: You have an enemy.
SPEAKER_00: He says that the devil is like a lion who's seeking to devour you.
SPEAKER_00: And yet, Jesus says, be a courageous, not a cowering people, a courageous people.
SPEAKER_00: Have the peace of God.
SPEAKER_00: So Jesus, he's the one that leads us into victory.
SPEAKER_00: He's the one that gives us the victory over Satan.
SPEAKER_00: He will ultimately give us victory over um sin and over sickness and over death.
SPEAKER_00: Uh Scott's gonna come, he's gonna lead us in um our time of communion.
SPEAKER_00: And uh, once he's done with that, we will um sing one last song.