For our Old Testament reading, please let’s turn together to the book of Leviticus. If you’re using the Pew Bible, the reading is found on page 108. We’ll be reading from chapter 15 of Leviticus, verses 25 through 30. And the reason for this particular reading is because it addresses the condition of someone we’re going to see in the New Testament reading. So, Leviticus 15, verses 25 through 30. Listen to this. This is the very word of God.
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. All 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. But if she is cleansed of her discharge, she shall count for herself seven days, and after that she shall be clean. And on the eighth day, she shall take two turtle doves or two pigeons and bring them to the priest to the entrance of the tent of meeting. And the priest shall use one for a sin offering and the other for a burnt offering. And the priest shall make atonement for her before the Lord for her unclean discharge. Now please turn to the gospel according to Luke chapter eight. where we find our New Testament reading, which is verses 40 through 56. Luke 8, 40 through 56.
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 Jesus’ feet, 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 had 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 are pressing in on you. But 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 immediately healed.
And he said to her, daughter, your faith has made you well. Go in peace. While he was still speaking, someone from the ruler’s house came and said, your daughter is dead. do not trouble the teacher anymore.’ But Jesus, on hearing this, answered him, Do not fear, only believe, and she shall be well.
When he came to the house, he allowed no one to enter with him except Peter and John and James and the father and mother of the child. And all were weeping and mourning for her. But he said, Do not weep, for she is not dead, but sleeping. And they laughed at him, knowing that she was dead. But taking her by the hand, he called, saying, Child, arise. And her spirit returned, and she got up at once. And he directed that something should be given her to eat. And her parents were amazed, but he charged them to tell no one what had happened.
That’s the reading of God’s word. Let’s pray. for His blessing upon it now. Well, Lord, if we come to Your Word, we pray that Your Spirit would be working through the Word in us, just as Christ and His Spirit worked powerfully in this woman and in this 12-year-old girl. May He work powerfully among us, too, through the means of grace unto life and holiness for Your glory. For we pray it in Jesus’ name. Amen.
Now in passages preceding this one in Luke, we read of how Jesus calmed a storm. He and his disciples were out on a boat on the Sea of Galilee, the Lake of Galilee, violent storm came and Jesus with his own innate and inherent authority calmed the storm. Then they got to the other side of the lake and they met with that man who was possessed not just by one demon or a few demons, but by a whole legion of demons. Jesus cast them out of this man. Jesus, through his power to cast out those demons, subdued this man that no one else had been able to subdue.
And here in this passage, which immediately follows that, Jesus shows his power and authority in two more situations that we, and mankind in general, would label as hopeless. Hopeless situations. First, you’ve got a woman who had a disease which, by Scripture’s own testimony here, could not be healed by anyone.
And then you’ve got a girl who, by the time Jesus got to her, had died. This passage makes it clear that she was dead. Jesus spoke of her as being asleep, and we see why. But she was dead. And there’s no hope at that point. So two situations that, humanly speaking, are hopeless. And Jesus brings hope. He brings healing.
He brings life into those situations. So, with the storm, and the demon-possessed man, and the woman with the issue of blood, and with the dead child, Jesus is showing His power, power that no one else possesses, power that is beyond any human ability. And this passage teaches us that Jesus has life-giving power over defilement and death for everyone who believes. not just the woman in the passage, not just Jairus’ daughter, but for you and for me. Jesus has life-giving power over defilement and death for everyone who believes.
You see the three points that we’re going to consider this morning. They’re printed for you in the bulletin. But first, we’ll consider that sinners are naturally in a state of defilement and death. That’s starting point for humanity ever since Genesis 3. Secondly, Christ has power to bring life and holiness. And then third, Christ and his benefits are received by grace through faith. So let’s consider this.
We sometimes speak of this as one of the aspects of the doctrine of total depravity. Sinners are naturally in a state of defilement and death. We don’t enter life as a blank slate. We don’t enter life innocent. We enter life as people who are dead in sins and trespasses and are defiled because of sin.
And as we reflect on this woman’s situation, and you think back to the reading from Leviticus, I think for us, and I’m sure that for us, and for most people, it’s genuinely difficult for any of us to comprehend how burdensome the ceremonial law of the Old Testament was. And when we read in the New Testament how Christ has freed us from the law, certainly he’s freed us from the law as a means for us to earn righteousness with God. So we can’t be obedient enough to please God and to be acceptable to him in and of ourselves. But when Scripture talks about us being freed from the law, it’s also making reference to that ceremonial law, those Levitical rites and offerings and sacrifices that had to be made, all the cleansings, everything that was prescribed in God’s Holy Word, not even taking into account the extra stuff that Pharisees in Jesus’ day had heaped up. In addition, the ceremonial law of the Old Testament was a huge burden. for those who had to live under it.
It was instructive. And in that sense, it was a means of grace, people to learn from all these things. But can you imagine how people went about under this constant threat of uncleanness? Imagine having to live like that. There were so many different things that you could come into contact with that would then make you unclean, and you couldn’t enter the assembly. You had to go wash with water and you remained unclean until evening, or in some cases, for multiple days. All that, I don’t mean to demean it or to speak irreverently of it.
Those were ordinances that were appointed by God, given to his priests, for the people to observe as instruction. They were under a tutor at that time. But the ceremonial law of the Old Testament was burdensome, and this woman was under it. All these Jews were under it.
The woman with the discharge was unclean, and anyone who touched her would become unclean. Anything she touched became unclean. And then, of course, the daughter of Jairus had died. And in the Old Testament system of ceremonial law, a dead body was unclean, and anyone who had contact with it became unclean.
And part of the reason I’ve said a couple of times, I think that those ordinances and those observances that the people were required to submit to in Old Testament Israel, under the Old Covenant. They were for the instruction of the people. They’re intended to teach things. And one of the things that they taught the people then, and they teach us now. See, these things are relevant.
It’s worthwhile for us to read Leviticus, because it teaches us things about sin. It teaches us about the defiling power of sin. And what it really does to us Sin makes all of us unclean in the sight of God. That’s what our sin does. Scripture says, God, His eyes are so pure that He can’t even look upon sin with any favor. And we’re sinners.
Which is why Isaiah, when he gives that account of seeing the Lord high and lifted up there in Isaiah chapter six, Instantly, he despaired. He said, I’m undone. Why? Because I’m a man of unclean lips. And everybody around me are people of unclean lips. That’s where I live. That’s my reality. Because of my sin, I’m unclean. Isaiah perceived that when he saw the awesome holiness of the Lord high and lifted up.
And for that reason, defilement and spiritual death are our starting point. No one comes into the world innocent or with a clean slate. None of us, as one of the philosophers put it, none of us is a tabula rasa. We are all already defiled from the time we were conceived in the womb.
Ephesians 2 says that. Speaking of anyone who’s apart from Christ, it says, you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked. Following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience, among whom we all once lived. in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and of the mind, and we’re by nature children of wrath, just like the rest of mankind.” That’s man’s condition apart from Christ. That is man’s condition in sin. So, the defilement and the uncleanness of sin brings on It makes us morally contaminated. It makes us spiritually contaminated. And the fact that we’re dead in sins and trespasses, that just illustrates that we’re powerless to help ourselves.
There’s nothing we can do to help ourselves out of that condition. You can put all the medicine you want to on the bedside table of a person that died in the hospital. They can’t reach out and take the medicine. They can’t swallow it. We’re powerless to help ourselves.
Sinners are naturally in a state of defilement and death. The fall, all the way back in Genesis chapter 3, when our first parents ate the fruit that God said, don’t eat that fruit. When they ate it, they sinned, they died, and all of the human race was brought into that state of sin and misery. And it’s into that bleak scenario that the Lord Jesus Christ comes. He comes into that bleak scenario with power.
Power to conquer sin and death. Power to pardon. Power to cleanse. Power to relieve. So that brings us to our second point. Christ has power. to bring life and holiness. In contrast and over against death and defilement, He brings life. He brings holiness.
And that’s depicted in raising this girl to life. It’s depicted in the healing of this woman who had a condition that defiled her and made her unclean. So you have the woman with the discharge of blood and merely touching the fringe of the garment of the Lord Jesus. She was healed. and she was immediately healed.
This is something that we should reflect on. It’s worth meditating on from time to time when it comes to Jesus healings, because we’ve all been sick, haven’t we? Many of us have had surgeries. Many of us have experienced injuries of different kinds. And our injuries and our sicknesses don’t go away immediately, do they? We don’t just go in an instant time from having the flu to just popping up and feeling like, go take on the world.
It’s a slow process. Coming up on two years ago, Hillary and I came and visited the candidate to be your pastor. And just a couple of months prior, I had had hip replacement surgery. And you may recall that when I showed up, I was walking with a cane. Two months after my surgery, People from our beloved congregation right here are sick at this moment. And it would be a surprise to us if they just felt like a million bucks tomorrow, wouldn’t it? Because that’s not usually how it works. Usually it takes time, but this woman was healed immediately. That’s what happens when Jesus touches people and heals them.
In Mark’s account, it’s very helpful if we kind of compare the accounts of Matthew and Mark, because they both recount this incident as well. And if we consult Mark, Mark says in Chapter 521 that the woman felt in her body that she was made well. I don’t know if you’ve ever had the experience of being sick and getting a medicine, whether it’s something over the counter or whether it’s a prescription, and you start to take it, and you can tell it’s working.
You start to feel better. But again, for us, it’s gradual. This woman could feel the healing. She knew that she was well. She felt it in her body, Mark tells us. This woman was made well at once. That’s not actually what the ESV says. So she’s made well immediately, I think. Yes, immediately her discharge of blood ceased. The reason I put it the way I did a moment ago, She was healed at once because if you look forward to where the little girl is raised. says in verse 55, she got up at once.
But the Greek word there is the same. Not sure why the ESV translators chose to say immediately in one spot and at once in another, but it’s the same word in both places. Also, by the way, it’s the same word when the woman describes to Jesus and to the crowd that she’d been immediately healed in 47. It’s the same word all three times.
There’s this immediacy to the healing work of Christ. in these people who encounter him and who come to him in faith. And because this woman was made perfectly well instantly, and there are no lingering symptoms of her former malady, she was therefore clean. Not only was she healed, but she was no longer unclean. It could be that for the sake of the Levitical precepts and so forth, she had to go through the process of the seven days and offer the sacrifice, but she was clean. She was healed.
And that cleanness that comes from the healing of Jesus is a depiction of holiness, purity, Now, in the case of the daughter of Jairus, she was dead. That’s confirmed for us in verse 53. The verse says that after Jesus said, she’s not dead, but sleeping, they laughed at him.
I think the old King James Version said they laughed him to scorn. They were ridiculing him. What a preposterous thing to say. But why did they do that? Because they knew she was dead. It was evident. There wasn’t any doubt. The girl was dead. But when Jesus called to her, he wasn’t just speaking into the air. He was giving a divine summons to her soul. Her spirit returned to her. And she got up immediately.
Just as the woman was healed immediately. again, consulting Mark’s account of this, it says in Mark 5, that she began walking. There again, that accentuates the immediacy of the healing there because, you know, after Oliver has his surgery, it may be some time before he can walk. People have procedures like that. You know, after my hip replacement surgery, I had to use a walker for a little while, then I had graduated to a cane, but it doesn’t just come instantly.
But this little girl who had been dead, summoned by Jesus, and He says, child arise. She got up and she walked. And evidently, she had an appetite too, because the Gospel writers all tell us that Jesus commanded that something be given her to eat. She was hungry. So, where there was death, Jesus brought life. And so, again, Christ’s power excels all others in the immediacy of its effects. The woman was immediately healed. There wasn’t a long, gradual recovery. The girl rose at once. Contact with the woman with the discharge or with the dead girl’s body would have made any ordinary person unclean.
That’s what we read in Leviticus, isn’t it? So this woman touched Jesus. If Jesus were an ordinary person, that would have made him unclean. But it doesn’t make him unclean. He reached out and took, it says he grasped the hand of the little girl, grasped the hand of a corpse. Any other person would have been made unclean by that, but not Jesus. because he is not an ordinary person.
Jesus holds the very power of life. He possesses it. It’s innate to him. Real contact with him makes defiled sinners clean. Real contact with him communicates the very power of life to the dead. How do you make real contact with Jesus? It’s through faith. That brings us to our third point. Christ and his benefits are received by grace through faith. And we see examples of faith in this text, beautiful examples of faith.
Jairus believed that Jesus could help his daughter. That’s why he went to him. That’s why he, a respected member of the community, a leader of the synagogue, a ruler of the synagogue, prominent and respected citizen of Capernaum, He fell down at Jesus’ feet, bowed down before him, and pleaded with him to come heal his daughter. In Matthew’s account of this, he says, Behold, a ruler came in and knelt before him, saying, My daughter has just died. Matthew, the Gospel writers, some sort of telescope accounts like this, some of them compress them. So Matthew just skips to the fact that the girl had died.
But you see the faith of this man. Come, lay your hand on her, he says, and she will live. Jairus believed Jesus could help. And of course, as Luke gives the account, before Jesus got to her, she died. And the messenger that came from the household of Jairus assumed that now that the child had died, there’s no point in pursuing it any further. Hope was lost. Nothing could be done.
But those wonderful, comforting words of Jesus were, don’t fear, only believe. Don’t let go of your faith, in other words. And in the case of the woman, whose name we don’t even know, it’s not even given in Scripture, this woman believed that Jesus could heal her. And again, Matthew helps us there too, because Matthew tells us that the woman said to herself, Luke left this out, but the woman said to herself, if I only touch his garment, I’ll be made well.
She’d spent everything on physicians, Luke says. And Luke was a physician. So this woman was hemorrhaging blood, but she was hemorrhaging money too. She’d spent her whole life savings trying to get well by means of doctors. No one could help her, but she believed that Jesus had the power. That was her faith.
And what did Jesus tell her? Your faith has made you well. Look at that with me again. Look at verse 48. He said to her, Daughter, your faith has made you well. Go in peace. Now turn back to Luke chapter 7, Luke 7, and look at verse 50. To that woman of the city who had come and anointed Jesus’ feet with ointment, washed his feet with her tears, dried his feet with her hair. What did he say to her? Verse 50 of Luke 7. Your faith has saved you. Go in peace. What beautiful words. Faith is essential for the spiritual life. Faith is essential for our spiritual life and for health.
Because many people came into contact with Jesus that day. The people had been waiting for Him when He arrived back on the Jewish side of the Sea of Galilee. They had been waiting. There were crowds. And in verse 42, at the end of verse 42, where it says, as he’s going, he’s heading off to the home of Jairus. And there’s just this statement that says, the people pressed around him, the people pressed around him.
The Greek word there actually means to choke. In fact, if you look at chapter eight, verse 14, remember the parable of the sower, where it describes what happens to the seed that was sown on different kinds of soil. And in verse 14, what fell among the thorns, it started to grow, but they’re choked by the cares and riches and pleasures of life. That’s the word there.
So, Jesus was being constricted in a sense. It’s not that some people in the crowd were choking him, but he physically was surrounded by people and he was being pressed on every side. So, lots of people must have touched him, not just the woman with the discharge of blood. But this woman was healed because she touched him in faith. She wasn’t just brushing shoulders with him, bumping into him. She reached out and in faith, she touched him because she believed that he could make her well. So faith makes all the difference, doesn’t it? Makes all the difference in the world. It is the distinguishing factor.
We see that over and over again in our doctrinal standards. Think about some of the statements, some of the phrases that appear in our shorter catechism. How does the Holy Spirit apply to us the redemption that is purchased by Christ? He applies it by working faith in us.
The Holy Spirit comes, He comes into a soul, He comes into a heart where there hadn’t been faith, and He works faith. And that makes all the difference. What does the Catechism say about justification? It’s an act of God’s free grace, says several other things. And it says it’s received by faith alone. Faith makes all the difference. These two healing miracles are illustrations of redemption. Christ, in all the benefits of his life-giving power, come to us through faith. By grace through faith.
So, Luke has given us a series of miraculous events, mighty works done by the Lord Jesus Christ, calming the storm, triumph over a legion of demons, healing an incurable disease, and then the climax of it all, restoring a dead girl to life. And all of this points to one great gospel fact, And that is that what man is unable to do, Christ is able to do. Sin defiles each one of us, but Christ has the power to cleanse from all unrighteousness. Apart from the gospel, all people are spiritually dead, but Christ has life-giving power to raise up all those who come to him in faith.
So, whatever you’re facing today, this applies to you as well. This speaks to you. These are words of comfort for you who are trusting in Him, because no matter what hardships you may be facing or anticipating, no matter what struggles you’re dealing with, no matter what burdens you’re bearing today, no matter what things you fear, Christ’s words to Jairus are Christ’s words to you, too.
Do not fear. Only believe. Do you have faith? Are you sitting here this morning as a person of faith? If you do have faith, then Christ’s words to the woman are also for you. These are Christ’s words to you, brothers and sisters. You’re trusting in Him. If you’re a person of faith, then Christ says your faith has made you well.
Go in peace. Thanks be to God. Let’s pray. Lord, thank you that Christ came mightily as a gracious and loving, conquering hero into our brokenness, into our uncleanness, into our deadness and sins and trespasses and brought power. Thank you that his spirit works faith in us. Please continue to do that, Lord. Work faith in many others this very day, we pray. And we pray that Christ would receive all the glory for it. We pray in his name. Amen.