Jesus Gives Life

Intro

If you live this life long enough, you are bound to experience the pain of death. Death sucks. It could be the death of grand-parent, parent, friend, cousin, uncle, or classmate. Perhaps nothing scares us more than the fear of losing a loved one. If you could, you would do everything humanly possible to keep a loved one from dying.

When the odor of death creeps into our life we get desperate.

It’s not just physical death that puts us in a funk. We experience death in different forms. Sometimes it’s a good death like the death of our sinful flesh but most times it’s not so good. It could be the death of a dream, death of a relationship, death of an ability. The unfortunate truth is that death is all around us.

No one has been able to beat death except for Jesus. Death came for Jesus like it does everyone, but Jesus did not stay dead. He rose and has kept on living.

We will see in our passage today that Jesus gives life.

What thoughts run through your mind, what image fills your imagination as you consider that Jesus gives life?

Jesus told the Jews, “I’ve come that you may have life and have it abundantly.”

The first notion of death appeared in the first few chapters of the first book of the Bible. We get introduced to the advent of both physical and spiritual death.

And those two deaths have been inflicting pain on humanity ever since. Sin is the root cause of those two deaths and the root cause of every other type of death we can think of.

In our passage, we meet two people who are experiencing the pain of death, and they are desperate for help, they are desperate for life.

Open your bible or bible app to Matthew 9:18-26. We’ll read and ask for God’s blessing on the proclamation of his word.

The Leader

Matthew tells us that Jesus was interrupted by a leader. We don’t get any description of this leader; we don’t get a name. Mark in his Gospel account gave more details but as we have seen so far in the Gospel of Matthew, Matthew is not concerned with the details of the narrative. His singular focus is showing us the ways Jesus proves his identity as the Messiah who has come to establish a Kingdom of restoration.

His singular focus is showing us that Jesus is the only one who can restore what sin broke. In every single way that we feel the effects of sin in our life, Matthew wants us to resign to the fact the Jesus is the resolution to those varying effects of sin.

We are inclined to find ways to troubleshoot the issues, the pain, the heartache, the discomfort, the disappointment we face with many other alternatives, but Jesus is the only source of true healing, true hope, true comfort, and true peace.

This leader comes up to Jesus in a posture of desperation and humility. Here’s a leader in Israel bending the knee to Jesus and crying out for help. His daughter has just died. He is humble enough to ask for help and desperate enough to be humble.

He’s not seeking help from the tarot cards. He’s not seeking help from his ancestors. He’s not bending the knee to the local herbalist. He’s not throwing his money at the Man of God. He runs to Jesus for help. He calls out to Jesus as the one who can bring life to the dead body of his baby girl.

He tells Jesus, “Come and lay your hand on her and she will live.” What an incredible faith. He believed that in Jesus resides the power to bring dead things to life. He believed that this man who has been walking around preaching about the Kingdom of God is not merely a prophet of God but is the Son of God who has all power in hands.

I want you to notice the expression of his faith. He did not like previous encounter Jesus had, ask Jesus to say the word and it will be so. He wanted Jesus to come and lay his hands on his daughter. Could Jesus have said the word and that be enough? Yes. But it’s important to see that we can express our faith in different ways without condemnation. Jesus does not condemn the man, he simply got up and followed him. The important part is that he had faith in Jesus.

Imagine a mother in a hospital waiting room, pacing back and forth, praying fervently for her sick child. She knows God can heal through a single word, yet she expresses her faith by praying for the medical professional and the course of treatment.

Consider a teenager, who struggles with anxiety and loneliness. He knows God can cure the anxious thoughts in an instant yet, he expresses his faith by writing out his struggles in a journal, believing that Jesus can use it to provide comfort and relief.

Picture a father whose daughter is lost in the darkness of addiction. He knows Jesus can save her with just a word, yet he expresses his faith by attending support groups and praying with others knowing that Jesus can use community to bring comfort and healing.

The leader believed Jesus can bring life to his daughter and expressed his faith by asking Jesus to come into his home.

Woman

On his way to the leader’s house, a woman grabs his attention. A woman whom Matthew tells us has been bleeding for 12 years and is at that moment dripping blood. This is not a great place to be. Her body is constantly loosing blood and there was nothing she could do about it. It is as though her body was dying. Life of the body is in the blood. It is why Jesus shedding his blood is often used as an analogy for his death.

She’s probably lost a lot of weight over the last 12 years. If she was married, her husband has probably left her. It is possible she has no friends. She is in a constant state of having her menstrual cycle which means she is not able to have kids if she wanted to.

She’s alive but it probably feels like she’s dying. The desire to have kids who share her DNA, dead; a husband who would love her and she can grow old with, dead; a stable job to provide for her means, dead. Nothing around her screams life.

But she believed Jesus could bring life to her dying body. She believed Jesus was powerful enough, Jesus was God enough, to give her life.

Matthew tells us she “approached Jesus.” The Greek word for approach gives the sense of urgency. She was desperate and wanted to catch Jesus before He got away. She didn’t care how she looked to others, she just wanted Jesus.

I’ve had times in my life where I cared too much what others thought about me, so I became ashamed of Jesus. I remember the moment that caused me to no longer care what others thought because if I had Jesus, I was going to be alright. As a college freshmen, I saw a guy who would become a friend of mine reading his bible in a public setting on campus and I thought he was crazy to publicly associate with Jesus in that manner. What I didn’t know was, he just wanted Jesus and didn’t care what others thought.

She wanted Jesus and she ran and with faith she believed if she could just touch the tassel of his garment, life will be restored into her body.

Tassels on the four corners of a garment were common in 1st century Palestine. In the Old Testament, God instructed Israelites to have tassels on their garments as a reminder to remember and obey the commands of God.

The woman believed if she could touch one of those tassels that is hanging below the garment she would be saved from death. What an incredible faith. She didn’t need Jesus to say a word or lay hands on her, she just wanted to touch the edge of his clothes.

Yet again a different expression of faith. As soon as she touched his garment, she no longer felt the flow of her blood. Life was restored to her body. She can hope again for kids, a husband, a job, and life with friends. Jesus did that for her.

Knowing something had happened, Jesus turned to her and said, “take heart, be comforted, be encouraged, your faith has made you well.” Your faith has saved you.

It is not the amount of faith that saved her but the object of her faith which is Jesus that saved her. It matters who and what you place your faith. Politics and politicians are not worth putting your faith in, education and degrees are not worth putting your faith in, work and accomplishments are not worth putting your faith in, only Jesus who gives life, only Jesus has all power is worth putting your faith in.

A woman whose body has been dying for 12 years is now filled with life because she believed Jesus is more than a great teacher, because she believed Jesus is more than a prophet, because she believed Jesus is the giver of life and the restorer of all that sin broke.

The Girl

Matthew takes us from Jesus’ interaction with the woman to the leader’s house where his daughter was laying dead. If there’s any need for confirmation that the girl had died, it is evident in the present of the professional mourners. The house is filled with flute players and people weeping on behalf of the man who has lost his daughter.

There is a lesson here for us as followers of Jesus. The bible instructs us to weep with those who weep and rejoice with those who rejoice. The folks at the house are weeping for the man who is not weeping. He believed Jesus can raise his daughter so tears of loss are dried from his eyes. We must be careful not to weep for those who are not weeping or to rejoice with those who are not rejoicing. We want to join in on people’s state of emotion and create one for them.

These folks are clearly professionals because they were easily able to switch from mourning to laughing at Jesus. They should have been rejoicing with the man that his daughter will soon come back to life but instead they mourned and laughed.

Jesus told them to get away. He said your business is no longer needed. The girl is not dead but is asleep.

She’s clearly dead to those who were in the room with her. Her heart was no longer breathing. They could tell life was gone from her. But Jesus saw it differently.

With a touch on her hand, he brought her back to life. He simply woke her up by grabbing her by the hand.

That might be hard for you to believe, and if it is then let me tell you what it means to be follower of Jesus.

To follow Jesus is to experience this same life-giving power that takes a spiritually dead heart, electrifies it with the Spirit of God; bringing life where death existed. The biggest miracle you can experience in this life is go from being dead in your sin and an enemy of God to being alive in Christ and a friend of God.

Jesus came so that we might have life and have it abundantly. He has the power to bring life where death reigns. Jesus told us that eternal life is to know God the Father and Jesus Christ his Son.

Just like the woman who was bleeding for 12 years, and the leader who cried out to Jesus on behalf of his daughter, just like them, when we place our faith in Jesus, we receive life that only Jesus can give. We begin to see our lives differently. We begin to see them through the lens of God.

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