Just Hang On

Text: Mark 5:21-43
Focus: Faith
Function: To help people see that faith is attainable.
Form: Story Telling

Intro:

From the journal, Bits and Pieces, July, 1991
The school system in a large city had a program to help children keep up with their school work during stays in the city’s hospitals. One day a teacher who was assigned to the program received a routine call asking her to visit a particular child. She took the child’s name and room number and talked briefly with the child’s regular class teacher. “We’re studying nouns and adverbs in his class now,” the regular teacher said, “and I’d be grateful if you could help him understand them so he doesn’t fall too far behind.”
The hospital program teacher went to see the boy that afternoon. No one had mentioned to her that the boy had been badly burned and was in great pain. Upset at the sight of the boy, she stammered as she told him, “I’ve been sent by your school to help you with nouns and adverbs.” When she left she felt she hadn’t accomplished much. But the next day, a nurse asked her, “What did you do to that boy?” The teacher felt she must have done something wrong and began to apologize. “No, no,” said the nurse. “You don’t know what I mean. We’ve been worried about that little boy, but ever since yesterday, his whole attitude has changed. He’s fighting back, responding to treatment. It’s as though he’s decided to live.”
Two weeks later the boy explained that he had completely given up hope until the teacher arrived. Everything changed when he came to a simple realization. He expressed it this way: “They wouldn’t send a teacher to work on nouns and adverbs with a dying boy, would they?”

This is a passage about hope and faith.

My hope, this morning is that everyone understands that hope is attainable.

The great risk of Jarius:
• Synagogue Ruler
• Anyone associating with Jesus will be put out of the circle of faith.
• He was giving up everything for his daughter.
• He was giving up everything for his faith.
• (SHOW) Sometimes following Jesus calls us to risk everything… …Friends, prestige, livelihood and respect.
• God brought Him to the place where He was desperate.
• The crowd has gathered around Jesus impeding Jesus’ progress.
• He knows she is dying.
• And all of a sudden, there is this great interruption.
• Be the man with me.
• You are desperate for a last hope.
• You know time is important.
• He can’t wait for Jesus to heal this woman because his daughter is more important.
• He feels what everyone of us feels.
• (SHOW) Why, if Jesus is God, do we have to wait for an answer to our prayers?
• I imagine that I would be angry at the woman and frustrated with the crowd and Jesus.
• But you can’t say anything because you do not want to put Jesus off the task at hand.
• (SHOW) Jarius is trying to hang on to a glimmer of hope in Jesus.

The image of the woman who was desperate:
• The woman is as desperate as Jarius.
• Spent all of her money.
• She is just as desperate as the man, but she knows she is only a woman.
• Jarius is big, strong and an important official in their town.
• (SHOW) She hangs on to Jesus in a different way.
• She is now also risking his displeasure at her for interrupting him.
• Many people refuse to accept the fact that they are important enough to God for God to touch them.
• But this woman has faith, she had faith enough to keep from letting her circumstances get the better of her.
• She has been bleeding for 12 years.
• It isn’t like she can get a blood transfusion.
• We have to imagine that the anemia has brought her into a very weakened condition.
• So, she goes for the bottom, the hem of the garment.
• But it isn’t just the bottom she is going for.
• Touch the hem of His garment
• The hem of the garment held religious significance.
o They had tassels on the 4 corners and a woven braid of 7 strands which held religious significance.
• It was almost mystical, or superstitious.
• She had to get to the hem.
• She demonstrates great faith, but it is still focused on something.
• God provides those things for us to focus on.
• (SHOW) God provides a way for us to focus on Him.
• But it isn’t magic.
• Did the garment heal the woman?
• We read of people, in the book of Acts who were placed in a position where Peter’s shadow passed over them in order to be healed.
• We read of them praying over cloths and sending them away to other people who were sick.
• Did these items contain magic? Or, where they symbols of a much deeper faith?
• Symbols are important because they help remind us of our faith.
• But it was HER faith that healed her.
• It was her choice to keep on trusting, even though she had been waiting 12 long years.
• 12 years is a very long time to wait, and many people give up on God at that point. But she didn’t.
• It was a weird statement by Jesus: “Who touched me?”
• There is a huge crowd around Him, but Jesus question is this: “Who reached out to me with faith?”
• (SHOW) A lot of people gather round Jesus… …but fewer people stretch out to Him in faith.
• Her faith impresses Jesus.

Meanwhile, we are back to Jarius:
• During the wait, his daughter died.
• The woman was hanging on to the hem of Jesus.
• Jarius is hanging on in a different matter.
• He has a position of prestige and power and is used to be listened to.
• I don’t know if He thinks that Jesus will respond because this could be a feather in Jesus’ cap or what.
• We don’t hear him say, “I’ll stop bothering you.”
• But the people who are with him are saying it.
• The people with him have given into the temptation to give up hope.
• I am sure that temptation is there for him as well.
• It seems pretty bleak, when the girl is already dead.
• I would want to say, “Lord, you shouldn’t have waited!!!”
• I don’t know if he is angry, or just too grief stricken and numb to care.
• I notice something that is very neat.
• Jesus takes the initiative.
• He knows what the man is feeling and thinking.
• And Jesus, initiates mercy.
• Have you ever given up hope?
• Look at this verse:
• (SHOW) 2 Timothy 2:13: Even when we are too weak to have any faith left, he remains faithful to us and will help us, for he cannot disown us who are part of himself, and he will always carry out his promises to us.
• Does Jesus care?
• To quote a line from last fall’s political campaigns when we wonder if Jesus cares: Does Jesus care? You betcha!
• They laugh at Jesus when Jesus chides them for believing the worse.
• I have to admit, I would have laughed as well.
• These are normal people carrying out normal reactions.
• Jesus isn’t angry with them, but He does want to demonstrate what faith in God can do.
• (SHOW) Let God show you what faith in God can do.
• Jesus raises the daughter from the dead.
• I can picture the overwhelming joy on the face of Jarius.
• It would make no difference to him whatsoever what people thought about him and his faith in Christ.
• His position of prestige means nothing compared to the issue of life and death that he has witnessed through faith in Christ.
• It is the same for us.
• Jesus offers us life, what can we give in exchange for that?
• Nothing.
• Dan Trego, the interpreter and leader of our week in Tijuana told us the price it cost his parents to serve Christ. Their family shunned them.
• But what can we give in exchange?
• With gratitude, we raise our hands and worship the Lord who saved us.

Both of these people were in desperate circumstances.
And both of them just held on in spite of circumstance.
Will you trust Him as well?