Jesus is Our Hope When Life Seems Hopeless (Mark 5:21-43)

Hopelessness

 On February 8, 2008, I walked into the children’s hospital in Dallas, Texas, to visit a student of mine who was very ill. The Friday prior, he had been in my class but looking under the weather. He mentioned that he must have caught a cold or the flu. I advised him to get some rest over the weekend and to take care of himself. That Saturday, his fever shot up to 106. He was rushed to the local hospital and then transferred to Children’s Hospital. By Monday, he was in a medically induced coma. Erskin and I went to visit him that Thursday. I had to wear a protective gown, hat, and medical mask. As I entered his room, I saw his mother stroking his arm, quietly pleading with him to wake up and get better. Roger was a young Hispanic boy, around fourteen years old. He weighed all of 110 pounds soaking wet. His body had swollen, and he was struggling to breathe. He did not look like his normal self, and at that moment, I became worried. My heart sank, and I knew Roger was not going to make it. Deep down, his father, who sat outside his son’s room, felt the same way. Hopeless is the only word I can use to describe the look on Roger’s father’s face. On February 8, my fears were confirmed: Roger passed away from a MRSA infection. He was just fourteen.

 Merriam Webster makes no bones about it.  Hopeless: a:  having no expectation of good or success: despairing  b : not susceptible to remedy or cure ex: doctors say his condition is hopeless c : incapable of redemption or improvement; 2a: giving no reason to expect good or success: giving no ground for hope: desperate b : incapable of solution, management, or accomplishment: impossible a hopeless task[1]

Everyone in this room understands, to some degree, what it means to feel hopeless. You wake up one morning with a sore back and think you must have pulled a muscle or something.You take a couple of ibuprofen, and it starts to feel better. Over the next few days, the soreness worsens, prompting you to visit the doctor for a check-up. The doctor suggests it might be kidney stones, and your heart sinks at the thought of passing a small rock through flesh meant exclusively for liquid. After running some tests, the doctor finds it's not a kidney stone at all, but aggressive cancer that has progressed too far—and he tells you there’s nothing he can do. Hopeless.

One day, you’re weeding the garden. You know you’ll be sore the next morning, so you take a couple of Aleve before bed. In the morning, you wake up to find your arms and legs stiff as boards. The muscles in your neck and shoulders are tender to the touch. It takes everything you have to get out of bed and get dressed. As the day progresses, fatigue slows down your activity and clouds your thinking. After two weeks of this, anxiety wells up in your heart because you wonder what is happening to you, and you go to the doctor. She says your bloodwork is fine, but your symptoms indicate damage to the nerves in your body; it might have been a bad reaction to the Aleve, or it could be genetic. They aren’t sure. After a few tests, they reveal you will have chronic pain for the rest of your life. Your heart sinks at the thought of waking up every morning like a corpse in rigor-mortis. You decide you’re going to fight. You muster the strength to research your options. You try every medication on the market, but nothing works.

You turn to organic and holistic methods. You walk 3.1 miles on the treadmill every day. You eliminate red meat and add leafy green vegetables to your diet. Natural oils replace pharmaceuticals. You take a B12 vitamin injection every other day and down two teaspoons of apple cider vinegar mixed with coconut oil and reverse osmosis filtered water from the Rocky Mountains before every meal. To top it off, you light up some medicinal marijuana you bought from the local cannabis store, “The Greenhouse.” Still, nothing works. In fact, the pain has worsened. You are now more immobile than before. You find yourself confined to a bed or a chair in the living room, watching reruns of shows you enjoyed when you were young and healthy. The headaches are unbearable and can only be managed with codeine in a dark, cool room. The fatigue has not only bedridden your body but has also invaded your soul. You pray, “I am finished. Please, take me home.” And you wake up the next day to do it all over again. Hopeless.

Hopelessness is a result of the fall. It is the consequence of sin. When God cursed Adam and Eve, He said, “Cursed is the ground because of you; in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life; thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you, and you shall eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your face, you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return" (Genesis 3:17-19).

By this account, God is signaling to mankind that sin is going trouble your hope with pain, hardship, and death.  In the garden before the fall, hope was as natural as the morning dew.  Since the fall, mankind has to labor for hope fighting through the thorns and thistles of sickness and death.

Paul reminds us of this reality in his second letter to the 2 Corinthians 4:16, when he says, “We do not lose heart even though our outer body is wasting away." In Paul’s context, he speaks to those who are afflicted, persecuted, and handed over to death. Broadly speaking, the outer man wasting away also refers to the human physical condition deteriorating due to natural causes like sickness and old age. 

Jesus tells us that in this world we will face tribulation, trials, suffering, sickness, and death. All of these burdens will pile upon your hope until it crushes it. However, he adds, “Take heart (or do not lose hope) for I have overcome the world” (John 16:33).

How can Jesus tell us not to lose heart or give up hope when we are surrounded by death, sickness, and suffering all day long? How has he overcome the world? The world does not appear to be overcome. He has conquered the world by defeating death. He reigns over it. Jesus has demonstrated his sovereign goodness and power over sickness and death in situations where hope seemed impossible, such as Mark 5:21-43, which recounts the healing of the woman and the resurrection of Jairus’s daughter. This morning, I want you to joyfully advance God’s kingdom by placing great emphasis on Jesus in your hope when life seems hopeless.

In our text, we will see four progressive movements of hope.  First, hope is troubled.  Next, Hope is lost.  Then, hope is ignited.  Finally, hope is restored.

Hope Troubled (v21-26)

 Beginning in verse 21, Jesus left the eastern side of the Sea of Galilee and returned to the western side. He was immediately met by a large crowd. Jesus was teaching about fasting, according to Matthew 9. While he was teaching, a synagogue leader named Jairus approached and knelt before him, begging Jesus to accompany him and heal his daughter, who was at death’s door. Jairus was not a scribe or a Pharisee but a worship administrator, ensuring that the synagogue was prepared for the meeting. Nevertheless, it required great courage and desperation for him to approach Jesus for his daughter’s sake, as doing so could easily have led to his expulsion from the synagogue, resulting in a loss of social and economic status. He did not care; his hope was wavering. His daughter lay dying, and there was nothing he could do. She was perishing. The phrase “at death’s door” is both literal and figurative.   

One way to recognize that someone is at death’s door is the “death rattle." I first recall hearing the death rattle when my seventy-three year-old grandmother was in the final stages of her life. She had been unconscious for some time. At one point, her breathing became interrupted and noisy. Just before death, a person’s throat relaxes, making it impossible to swallow or cough, causing fluid to accumulate at the bottom of the throat. This signifies that someone is moments away from dying; they are at “death’s door." Jairus’s daughter was one step from eternity, and he was aware of it. He could hear it in her breathing. He was desperate. He learned that Jesus was back in town and remembered his miracles. Perhaps he was in the synagogue when the man with the demon was healed. Regardless, he was out of options, so he ran as fast as he could to seek Jesus's help. His hope was troubled. Genesis 3 had crashed into his life and was on the brink of taking his daughter.

There was another whose hope was troubled. An older woman had been dealing with a menstrual bleeding condition for the past twelve years. She sought relief from her local doctors. The treatments they prescribed varied from magical concoctions to superstitious nonsense. The Talmud lists eleven remedies for chronic menstrual bleeding. For instance, one section states:

“Take of the gum of Alexandria the weight of a small silver coin; of alum the same; of crocus the same. Let them be bruised together and given in wine to the woman that has an issue of blood. If this does not benefit take of Persian onions three pints; boil them in wine, and give her to drink, and say “Arise from thy flux.” If this does not cure her, set her in a place where two ways meet, and let her hold a cup of wine in her right hand, and let someone come behind and frighten her, and say, “Arise from thy flux.”[2]

 The poor woman endured this treatment, and more importantly, the treatment caused her physical pain. The text states that she became significantly worse after the treatments, which is understandable. Crocus is a type of flower from which we obtain saffron. It is known to break up blood clots and serve as a blood thinner. Women who experience heavy menstrual bleeding should not take it. The medicine was exacerbating her condition and leaving her financially troubled.

Many of us understand how medical bills can spiral out of control. A trip to the E.R. can quickly deplete your finances by a couple of thousand dollars. Mark tells us that the woman spent all she had to get well. To add insult to injury, she faced social and spiritual distress. Due to her condition, she was considered ceremonially unclean, which prevented her from worshiping in the temple (Leviticus 15:19-27). Moreover, anyone she touched would also become unclean. Her sickness affected her physically, economically, socially, and spiritually. James Edward's remarks, “She suffered much from many physicians, exhausted all her resources. A large crowd stood between her and her healing as she arrived where he was teaching.  Moreover, her hope was to walk away.  Jesus had already turned to walk with Jairus.  We know this because the woman had to come behind Jesus in verse 27. 

Jesus told us our hope would be troubled in this life. The trouble with hope is that it relies on a set of favorable conditions. If I am single, I hope to marry the love of my life if she says yes. If I am in the midst of my career, I plan to retire at sixty-five if the economy remains stable. If I am sick, I hope to survive cancer if the procedures and treatments work. My hope, often as it seems, depends on someone or something else working for my good. In a broken world that appears more chaotic and unfriendly than agreeable, my hope does not just seem troubled; often, it feels lost. For the woman in our story, she will get better if she can reach Jesus to heal her, and if Jesus is willing to defile himself by touching an unclean person. The problem is, she watches her hope walk away to be lost, perhaps forever.

 Hope Lost (v27-35)

Desperate, the woman navigates through the crowd to get behind Jesus. In her heart, she believes that Jesus is a healer, and if she can get close enough to touch the tassel hanging from his waist, she will be cured. In an act of faith, she reaches out and touches his tassel. Immediately, her bleeding stops, and she feels physically better. Her heart is ecstatic; something marvelous has just happened. Jesus did what no one else could do for her, and he accomplished it in a way that seemed impossible—through his clothes. Verse 33 describes the woman as feeling fear and trembling. She responds to Christ just as the disciples did when Jesus calmed the storm, and similarly to how the herdsmen reacted when they witnessed the man restored from demon possession: with fear and trembling. 

Jesus’s power instills fear in the hearts of those he encounters. Jesus is no ordinary magician or con man; he is unique. Something beyond healing occurred with the woman. When Jesus turns and demands to know who touched his garment, “The woman was compelled to fall before him and tell him the whole truth.” She confesses to Jesus that she is suffering from menstrual bleeding. She acknowledges that she knows Jesus is a rabbi, a holy teacher, and that she is unclean, meaning that touching him made him unclean. She throws herself at Jesus’s mercy, and instead of rebuking her for using him and rendering him unfit for temple worship, he affirms her faith: “Daughter, your faith has made you well!” The reality is that she did not make him unclean; rather, by faith, he made her clean. She did not make him unapproachable to the temple; he made her acceptable in the sight of God. That is the beauty of Jesus. He makes us clean; that is righteousness. 

The woman heard about Jesus, came to Him, and touched Him. By her faith, she was made well. Jesus tells her, “Go in peace and be healed of your affliction.” That is the gospel. By faith, we have ears to hear Jesus. By faith, we come to Jesus. By faith, we are healed of our iniquity. By faith, we have peace with God. By faith, we are made clean and righteous before God. Romans 5:1-2 states, “Therefore, since we have been declared righteous by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. 2 We have also obtained access through Him by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God.” The woman serves as a model for us to understand what it means to come to Jesus by faith. Jesus demonstrates what our faith can accomplish. She is not only a model for us, but she also quickly becomes a model for Jairus.

Can you imagine the agony Jairus is experiencing while Jesus is attending to the woman? Jairus was first in line, facing a more urgent need. The woman is bleeding, which is unfortunate, but his daughter is moments from death. Jesus needs to prioritize and act more swiftly. Tim Keller describes it this way: “Imagine Jairus’s anxiety during all of this, the disciplesThe little girl needs help from you now, Jesus. Hurry, Jesus, hurry.”[3]  But Jesus will not be hurried, and of course, Jairus’s hope is lost.  While Jesus was still speaking to the woman, some people came from the house of the synagogue and told Jairus what he feared most, “Your daughter has died.”

The five stages of grief are shock, denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. I imagine Jairus felt shock and anger all at once. He had gotten his hopes up. Jesus agreed to see his daughter. They were only a few yards from his house. And now his hope is all gone, lost with his daughter. I can picture the look on Jairus’s face when he turned to Jesus. The words, “Your daughter is dead” still ringing in his ears as his eyes met Christ’s. Christ had an answer for his hopelessness: “Do not be afraid any longer, only believe.”

 The way Mark describes how Jesus heard the report in v36 is nothing short of stunning. The Greek word “παρακούειν” (translated in the NIV as “ignoring”) has three distinct meanings: (1) to overhear something not intended for one’s ears, (2) to pay no attention to or ignore, and (3) to refuse to listen or discount the truth ofTo say you are hopeless in Christ is to say that Christ is too small and unable to handle whatever it is you are dealing with, even death itself.

This was Peter’s problem when he left the boat in Matthew 14:22-33.  Peter had seen Jesus do miracle after miracle.  He saw Jesus walking on the water.  He believed in Jesu enough to get out of the boat.  Once out of the boat he took his eyes off of Christ and fixed them on the storm and the waves and the wind, and at once he felt hopeless.  He began to sink.  Jesus did not coddle him at all and say, “It’s ok, I know you were scared.”  Instead he rebuked him and said, “Why did you doubt?  You of little faith?”  Why did he rebuke him?  He rebuked him because Peter thought more of the storm than he did of Christ.  He thought his circumstances were bigger than the God who is sovereign over his circumstances.  That is what hopelessness does, it belittles God.

 Perhaps today is a day to repent of hopelessness. Darren Mulligan of the band “We Are Messengers” has a song titled “Magnify” that resonates with the essence of repenting for hopelessness:

My sight is incomplete, and I've made you look small

I've been staring at my problems for way too long

Re-align where my hope is set, until you're all that's left

But just a glimpse draws my heart to change

And one sight of you lays my sin to waste

I don't need to see everything just more of you

(chorus)

Take it all, take it all away

Magnify no other name

Open up, open up my eyes

To you

Oh God be greater than the worries in my life

Be stronger, than the weakness in my mind

Be louder, let your Glory come alive

Be Magnified.[4]

Magnifying God when life seems hopeless does not just happen. We make a choice every day to magnify God when life appears hopeless, even when things are steady at the moment. Each day, if you choose to leave your Bible closed and sitting by your chair or on a shelf, you are choosing hopelessness. Every day, when your schedule is filled with talking to people and neglecting to spend uninterrupted time with the Lord, you are choosing hopelessness. When you prioritize worldly events over time spent with God on the Lord’s day with the Lord’s people, you are choosing hopelessness. One day, it will all hit the fan, and instead of standing on solid rock as the waves of sickness and death batter you, you will be sinking in the sand of despair.

 Jesus did not leave Jairus without hope. If Jairus was paying attention, the woman served a purpose of grace for him. Despite Jairus’s hope being crushed at the death of his daughter, Jesus healing the woman ignites hope that He is not done with Jairus or his daughter. There is a condition, but it’s not like any condition we face in this world where people or circumstances must be agreeable. This condition rests on One who is willing and able to work all things for our good. Jairus, like you and me, must believe. The Greek word for believe is a present tense imperative, implying our belief must be ongoing. As Edwards notes once again, “keeping hold onto faith rather than give in to despair.”

Hope Ignited (v33-42)

Wisely, Jairus accompanies Jesus to his house, where professional mourners have already gathered, wailing and causing a commotion. Jesus rebukes them with a profound statement: “Why make a commotion and weep? The child has not died but is asleep.” This seems odd at first. We know the girl is dead; Jairus knew it, and his friends who informed him of her death knew it too. The mourners outside were aware of it, as they laughed at Jesus when he suggested she was asleep. Why did he say she was asleep?

Jesus was not belittling Jairus’s situation. Instead, he was providing Jairus a way to view his daughter’s state. When Jesus enters the room where the girl is sleeping, he approaches her as a father might approach a child who needs to wake up in the morning or from a nap. He takes her by the hand and says, “Talitha Koum.” Talitha is an Arabic term of endearment, akin to the words “honey” or “sweetie,” as Tim Keller suggests. One of my favorite times in our house occurs at the start of the day when I walk into the girls' room and sit on the edge of Abbie’s bed. Sometimes, I’ll brush her hair away or rub her back and say, “Hey, baby girl, it’s time to get up and make it a great day.” That is Talitha Koum: “Baby girl, it’s time to get up.”

At this moment, hope is ignited. The girl wakes up as if she were taking a nap. Death was merely a time of rest for her. In the hands of Christ, death becomes nothing more than an opportunity to awaken in the love and care of King Jesus. Timothy Keller points out, “Jesus is saying by his actions, “If I have you by the hand, death itself is nothing but sleep.” Death is our greatest enemy. Death separates us from life, not just physical life but our spiritual life as well. In the hands of Christ, death is not our enemy but our servant, guiding us to be with our King. We have every reason to hope. Nothing can separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus, not even death itself. How can this be? Christ became weak so that we could be made strong.

Through Christ’s death, we have the power to live. Paul says to the Corinthian church, “He was crucified in weakness, but He lives by God’s power. For we also are weak in Him, yet toward you, we will live with Him by God’s power.” What Paul is expressing is, “Christ was crucified in weakness so that we can live in God’s power. Christ became weak so that we can be strong.” He willingly died so that Jairus, his daughter, the woman, and you and I could live. As Keller puts it so poetically and beautifully, “He lost hold of his Father’s hand so we could know that once He has us by the hand, He will never, ever forsake us.” With that, He did not leave Jairus or his daughter with just a spark of hope. He offers them, and us, a fully restored hope.

Hope Restored (v34; 42-43)

 The girls immediately got up and began to walk. She was even given something to eat. There was no doubt about it; she was fully healed. She was no different than the woman who once was bleeding and unclean, but now is made whole and acceptable. It is no coincidence that the woman started bleeding the same year that the little girl was born; the girl was twelve years old. The woman and the girl are forever linked together as a portrait of eternal grace for us. They represent what Christians are in Christ now and in the age to come. When death comes to take us home, we will close our eyes in this life and awaken in the next, in the hands of Jesus. He will say to us, “My little child, it’s time to get up.” We will arise and walk with new legs and a new body. We will be restored. The old will pass away, and the new will be complete. He will give us something to eat. We will sit down at the wedding feast of the Lamb, enjoying His fellowship and celebrating His work for all eternity. This is our hope in Christ.

5 Points of Application

1.    Hopelessness is a reality only for those in hell, not for those in Christ, or even for those who can hear the gospel.  If you are a Christian, your hope is secured.  Your faith has made you well.  If you are an unbeliever, as long as you have breathed you have the grace to hear the gospel, respond in repentance and faith, and believe Jesus is your hope.

2.    Jesus requires that he be the object of your faith, not your circumstances. 

3.    When you come to Christ in faith, do not be surprised he takes you farther than you wanted to go.  Tim Keller points out, Jairus came to Jesus looking for healing for a fever, not the resurrection of his daughter. 

4.    Jesus wants to know you and is known by you, not just as your vending machine.  The reason why Jesus was persistent in finding out who touched him was that he knew the woman’s heart.  She came looking for a cure from a superstitious healer.  Jesus showed her that he was concerned more about her heart.  Following Jesus is not simply getting our needs met; it is in the presence of Jesus, is known by him, and following him.

5.    Jesus will make your faith go public.  Again, the woman serves as our example.  He brought her to his feet, and she confessed.

[1] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/hopeless

[2]R. Kent Hughes, Mark: Jesus, Servant and Savior, vol. 1, Preaching the Word (Westchester, IL: Crossway Books, 1989), 124–126.

[3] Timothy Keller, Jesus the King: Understanding the Life and Death of the Son of God (New York: Riverhead Books, 2013), 66.

[4] Darren Mulligan “Magnify” We Are Messngers 2016