10- Jairus & Fran: Mark 5:21-43 - Mike Olynyk, Meadows Church

You're invited!  Come on a journey as we see the sights, smell the smells & experience Jesus' story told by Mark in an immersive way.  Engage in the story as one of the crowd, the disciples or even as a religious leader.  For an even more immersive experience, click the link below to follow along with the PDF media with maps, pictures of historical sites and more.

JAIRUS & FRAN PDF - CLICK HERE

Meadows Church is a church in the community, for the community, located in Langley, BC.  We want you to know that you're welcome here!

Transcript

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You're listening to audio from Meadows Church in Langley, BC. For more information about Meadows Church, go to Meadowschurch.ca. Doing good? Yeah? I I am particularly excited because we we've been away from our Encountering Jesus series over the last couple weeks. We had a great conversation on just Meadows Church culture. And then last week we got a chance to really serve the community and be the church in the community through our laser tag and movie night. And so now we get to get back to it. And I want to continue to challenge you. We're not just reading scripture. We want to experience Jesus. We want to smell the smells. We want to see the sights. And we want to ask the question what do they think of what is going on as a crowd or as the disciples? And so we are going to dive into our next story. But if you missed the last couple weeks, or if you miss, if you miss a week, I want to say you can go to our website, uh, meadowschurch.ca slash messages, and you can get not only the audio, but also all of the slides that come up behind me are available there as well. And so I welcome you to do that. When we last left our fearless hero Jesus, he was on a ministry whirlwind, a 24-hour period of just slammed with awesome. And it all started on as he taught the crowd from a boat, and he taught right into the evening. And after that teaching time, rather than going and taking a nap and then coming back and then getting in the boat in daytime, he then proceeded in the boat that he's taught in to go to the other side of the Sea of Galilee. The problem was this happened. Jesus fell asleep, and there was a massive storm. And the disciples are going nuts, trying to keep the boat from sinking. And then they just say, Jesus, don't you care that we're going to die? And Jesus just goes, Shh. And he shushes the storm. Peace be still, he says. And then it goes from like this to a sea of glass. Well, the disciples are reeling from that and they're saying, Who is this dude? Even the wind and the waves obey him. And they it be they finish their journey and they get to the other side of the Sea of Galilee, to this area where a man comes and he has thousands of demons, a legion of demons inside of him. The demons go into the pigs and rush into the Sea of Galilee. And no more bacon. And that's sad. It was also sad for the people whose economy that was. Yet there is so much nuance, and if you missed it, go and check out that last talk as it really dives into those nuances. Anyways, they want him out of there. They're amazed, but they're like, you gotta go. And so Jesus gets back in the boat and he heads back over to Capernaum on the other side. At this point, the disciples must be thinking, it is time for some R. This has all happened in a 24-hour period. And this two-hour sail ride is part of this as well. And we're gonna dive in as they head to their hometown. Do they get that RR? I think you know the answer is probably no. Well, let's pray and then we'll dive in. God, I thank you for your word. I thank you that it's true. I thank you that uh that you are a living God and that we can learn so much. So, Holy Spirit, give us eyes to see what you have for us today as we read through Mark 5. In Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. Mark 5, 21, I'm reading from the NLT. And it says this. Jesus got into the boat again and went back to the other side of the lake, where a large crowd gathered around him on the shore. Can you picture what's happening here? So they see Jesus coming back to the other side, and I can just see them going, the teacher, the healer, he's back. I can see him coming. He hasn't even gotten to shore yet, and people are starting to crowd around. Jesus doesn't go home, and then the crowd sees him. They meet him on the shore. And there is one man who gets wind of Jesus coming to shore, and he is desperate to see Jesus. Verse 22. Then a leader of the local synagogue, whose name was Jairus, arrived. When he saw Jesus, he fell at his feet, pleading fervently with him. My daughter is dying, he said. Please come and lay your hands on her. Heal her so she can live. So Jesus went with him, and all the people followed, crowding around him. I think it's quite noteworthy that Jairus is a synagogue leader. And this synagogue leader falls at the feet of Jesus, and he is begging for help. And this is not only undignified for a religious leader to do, but in public, but it was to Jesus. The animosity towards Jesus starts in Mark 3, where the Pharisees say, we gotta kill Jesus. And so all these religious leaders are doing this, and yet Jarius was begging at the feet of Jesus. And it goes to show that not every religious leader was against Jesus, and that at least in Jairus's time of need, his time of desperation, he turned to Jesus. Well, can you see it? Directing Jesus with utmost speed. There is a heavy crowd of people around him in a very small causeway. Get out of my way, clear the way. My daughter's dying. He needs to get there. Luke's account tells us that she was 12 years old. And that to me hits close to home because my daughter, McKenna, is 12. And I think about that. And to see Jairus just struggling with this. Can you picture it? Can you picture Jairus in that moment before Jesus steps foot on the shore? And the Bible says his daughter is dying. The Greek word here for dying is skatos, which literally means at the point of death. Here, Dad is helpless as a disease ravages his precious daughter's body. He is trying everything to save his daughter to no avail. The doctors have come to the house. I'm sorry, Jairus. She's not going to make it. She could even pass today. I don't know that if you've ever been in the room with somebody who's about to pass, it's hard. The breathing gets shallower. There's almost a struggle for breath. Like, no. Can you feel the tension in that moment? His baby girl. Well, someone says Jesus is on his way back from the other side of the sea. And so Jairus runs to the water's edge to flag down Jesus, pushing through the crowd of people gathering. And he he is watching in agony as this sailboat slowly comes to shore. As his daughter has just precious minutes to live. Well, Jesus went with him. Yes. And all the people followed, crowding around him. A woman in the crowd had suffered for 12 years with constant bleeding. Now I'm going to stop for a second. We did this with Frank last time. And I think we should do it with Fran. Okay, so we just we have this woman. She is the woman who bleeds. And I just don't like that. So we're just going to call her Fran. Is that okay? And so Fran has been constantly bleeding. She has suffered a great deal from many doctors, verse 26 says. And over the years, she has spent everything she has to pay them. But she hasn't gotten, but she has gotten no better. In fact, she's actually gotten worse. She has heard about Jesus, and so she came up behind him through the crowd and touched his robe. For she thought to herself, if I can just touch his robe, I will be healed. See, friends, Fran has lost everything. And I can just imagine that the crowd. This is Capernaum. And if you could see the steps here, this is the narrow walkway between houses. And so getting through that with all these people, and this extended farther, though that's what they've uncovered, would have been difficult and slow. Enough time that an infirmed woman was able to push ahead and touch the robe of Jesus. I love this artist rendering of it. Well, immediately the bleeding stopped, and she could feel in her body that she had been healed of her terrible condition. Jesus realized at once that power, healing power had gone out from him, so he turned around in the crowd and asked, Who touched my robe? His disciples said to him, Look at this crowd pressed around you. How can you ask who touched me? Everybody's touching you, Jesus. Crowded around him. But he kept on looking around to see who had done it. And I just love this part of the story. We see Jesus' human spiritual tank here. Jesus had a noticeable drain of power from him. It affected him. To the point where he doesn't go, oh, you guys are right, everybody's touching me, something happened. No. He stops, he searches the person out. Then the frightened woman, trembling at the realization of what had happened to her, came and fell to her knees in front of him and told him what she had done. Those words, what should we she had done, I think, are a nuance that if you're not looking for it, is it doesn't share the full story. You see, to a religious leader, they might have an angry response to this. You see, Fran was infirmed, she was bleeding, she was actually unclean by Levitical law. And so this means by touching a religious leader, it would make them unclean, and they would not be able to perform their duties without ceremonial cleansing process. What would Jesus say to her? She was frightened. Was she embarrassed to be the center of detention in the crowd, too? I think so. But Jesus, there's no there's no scorn from him. There's no shame. This is not the Jesus we know and love. Jesus loves her, he has healed her, he has cleansed her, and now he wants to connect with her. And he said to her, daughter, your faith has made you well. Go in peace. Your suffering is over. It's just, I just think what a beautiful story in the midst of this like plight of desperation of a father's love for his daughter. But you see, friends, Jesus always has enough time for us. Always. And he shows it in this story. Well, while he was still speaking to her, messengers arrived from the house of Jairus, the leader of the synagogue. They told him, Your uh your daughter is dead. There's no use troubling the teacher now. Just gut-wrenching. Not only has he failed to bring Jesus to his daughter before she passes away, but he hasn't been there at her bedside as she breathes her last breath. I can picture him starting to tear up. He is just stunned and heartbroken. Jesus brings hope. But Jesus overheard them and said to Jairus, do not be afraid. Just have faith. Do not be afraid. Just have faith. Then Jesus stopped the crowd. Do you see the moment? He's walking towards Jairus' house. Fran is healed, and then now he says, Don't be afraid. And now he says, Whoa, whoa, whoa, guys, stop! You need to stop. And he wouldn't let them go on with him except for three of his main dudes, Peter, James, and John, who is the brother of James. And I just think this shows the compassion of Jesus. There's no more pushing against him from the sides, slowing the path for Jairus to get to his daughter. And no, the crowd would not show up unannounced at a family's house that is mourning the loss of this little girl. Jesus has compassion. Peter, James, and John with me. Everybody else hang out. I'm going. When they came to the home of the synagogue leader, Jesus saw much commotion and weeping and wailing, and he went inside and asked, Why all this commotion and weeping? The child isn't dead. She's only sleeping. You see, they knew that she was dead. They had seen it with their own eyes. They were mourning the loss of that. The shallow breathing had stopped. And so the crowd laughed at him. And can you see this tense emotion here? There is a crowd of people at the house, and they are mourning this beautiful girl that's the same age as McKenna. She's only sleeping, Jesus? We've seen it with our own eyes. This laughter is tearful. This is painful laughter, not happy laughing. And I, if I can, if I can get into the mind of the crowd, it might actually be them lashing out at Jesus. If only if you were here, then she would be well. I mean, come on. They are in Capernaum. Most of what Jesus has done, all the healings, uh they've seen it. They've seen the exorcism. They've seen like a whole crowd of people be healed one at a time. They saw the paralytic come through the ceiling and then he healed him, and the paralytic walks away. Why couldn't he have gotten there sooner? And then to say she's sleeping, they've heard of healers, but straight up nobody's risen, anybody from the dead. That's just impossible. No, there's doubt and there's pain there, friends. And the crowd lacks faith. And although Jesus doesn't push them away permanently, he disqualifies them from seeing what's about to happen. This absolutely amazing miracle. But he made them all leave, verse 40 says, and he took the girl's father and mother and his three disciples into the room where the girl was lying. And I just feel like maybe there was a sudden change in the mood. Like Jesus said, Out. And as they are leaving, what is this crowd thinking? What is he gonna do? Are they just gonna have a quiet time together? Is he gonna do the healing thing? But she's dead. All of these questions are happening. And what Jesus does is he's this is not the great shouts, it's another example of gentle love. He simply takes this beautiful girl by the hand and pulls her out of death. Verse 41. Holding her hand, he said to her, Talitha kum, which means little girl, get up. And the girl, who was twelve years old, immediately stood up and walked around. And they were overwhelmed and they were totally amazed. And Jesus gave them strict orders not to tell anyone what had happened, and then he told them to give her something to eat. Oh man. I just think like what a powerful and loving God that we serve. I'm giving you lots of extra research that I've done. I and I and I think it's helpful because of a key fact in our story is that this is history. It's not mythology, it's not a warm and fuzzy. And so, as I as I think about this, that this book is truth, it begs the question. As we experience what the crowd felt like, as we experienced the plight of Jairus as he just wills Jesus' boat to get to shore, all of that. I believe that this is truth. That this is the living word of God that not only is true, but it impacts our heart. And the question is, are you willing to embrace it as that? It's my experience in belief. My experience of embracing it. It has changed my life forever, friends. And in the same way that Jesus grabs the little girl's hand gently and pulls her out of death, in that same way, Jesus wants to do that with us. He wants to grab us by the hand and pull us out of life's chaos and the mud that we're in. And it's not like everything's gonna be fantastic, nothing ever goes wrong. But what we do have is that we have in this craziness of the walk of life that we have, we get to walk alongside the Almighty Creator of the universe. Who created you and he created me. And yet he has the time to hang out with a frail and broken woman when frantic and chaos is going on around him. So my question, friends, is uh what what do you trust in? Like where where's your faith posture at? This is a safe place to to kind of analyze that. I'll invite the worship team up as I as I uh go through these. I think there's just three faith postures. And if you if it helps for you to close your eyes so that you can kind of self-assess or or to look into it, I invite you to do that. First, there is the faith of Fran. Maybe you're here today and you have this like solid rock faith of Fran. You know that Jesus is who he says he is, who the Bible says he is, and you've reached out and you've touched his garment, and he has changed your life forever. And if that's you, be encouraged and then be challenged. Because Jesus wants you to use every opportunity you have to share your experience and faith journey with others. Well, the second faith posture maybe you have the faith of gyrus. Maybe uh in the ebb and flow of life, your faith does that too. And when somebody tells you horrible news, the death of someone you love, your faith is shaken. I can confess that I think I waver sometimes between the faith of Fran, and sometimes I end up in the faith of Jairus, where life is hard, and it's not fun at times. And I have these moments where negative self-top goes and I and I wrestle with things, and Satan whispers lies. And I don't know if you've ever been there, but if you have been there, it is okay. That's why we have this community to point us back to Jesus, to point us to that faith, to show that love. And maybe today, if that's you in this moment, maybe you need to hear what Jesus said to Jairus. Don't be afraid. Just have faith. As hard as that is, to embrace that and to live that out. Does your heart need to hear that today? Boaster your faith, friends. In this closing moments, we're gonna sing a closing song that talks about just the love he has for us. And I invite you to think on that. I do think there's one more faith posture, though, first. Maybe you're here, and as you think about Jesus and as you hear what I'm saying, your heart actually aligns with the crowd of mourners. Where you look at the hope and the joy and the love that Jesus offers, and that you look at our word world and you just snicker bitterly. If you were only, if only you weren't a fairy tale, Jesus. If only you were who you say you are. If that's you, I want to say that that Jesus hears that. And that he invites you to come to him as you are. He wants to show you he's real, he wants to embrace you. Today, I believe Jesus wants to make himself known to you. I mean, friends, how many mourners? How many of those mourners' hearts were changed forever in the moments they saw that beloved girl walking around and eating food again? So, friends, my prayer is we've walked through this. And now as we sing this beautiful song, How He Loves Us, my prayer is that you would experience the love of Jesus. His patient, gentle, forgiving, and all-encompassing love. Don't miss the embrace right now. God, I thank you that you are here. That you are just that big a God. That you walk alongside us. Would you come and minister to our hearts? For those who are the crowd right now, would you come and may they experience you fully? For those that are gyrus, may you bolster their faith. And may those who have the faith of friend just be encouraged to go and share that love with others. Speak to our hearts now in Jesus' name. We're so glad you chose to join us today. To find out more about Meadows Church and how you can get involved, connect with the pastor or how you can partner with us in ministry. Go to Meadowschurch.ca.