Untitled Sermon (8)

matthew 9

Intro: Good morning, go ahead and open your bibles to Matthew chapter 9 as we continue in our miracles of Jesus series. As we’ve gone through this series, we have looked at the fact that Jesus has authority over nature, that he has authority the demonic, and last week we saw that Jesus has the authority to forgive sins.

And if we remember what we discussed in the beginning of this series, the whole focus of this series… the very reason why Matthew, Mark, Luke and John recorded these events was to convey a message to their audience. The point of these miracles tells us more about who Jesus is, instead of what he did. If we just focus on what he did, we miss the point.

Because remember, Jesus made claims about himself and did things that only God himself could actually make a claim to and do. Think about last week. His question to the pharisees, even his ability to know what they were thinking.

He asked “what is easier to do, to say a man’s sins are forgiven or tell a paralytic who can’t walk, I mean his buddies had to carry him there, to get up and walk? And Jesus said, “oh yeah, so that you know that I have the power to forgive sins, watch this, go ahead get up and walk. And the man who had never walked got up, fully restored, with no muscle atrophy, and walked. It was a big mic drop moment.

 And the reason the pharisee were so angry is because they understood who Jesus was claiming to be. But he didn’t just claim to be the all-knowing God who was able to take away sins, he proved it by the evidence of his miracles.

So, what we do with that knowledge really matters. When we read these events and we come to understand who Jesus really is, that he is God. What do we do with it? What do we do with that knowledge? What do we personally conclude about who Jesus is? Because that really matters.

Because here’s the thing, we can’t pick and choose. You can’t just say, “I like all of the moral teachings of Jesus and all the good things that he did, so I’m going to model my life after his and then just ignore all of his claims about who he is and all of the miracles that he preformed to prove who he is. He either has to be who he said he was to you or you’re missing the point and all your morals and all of the good things that you do wont matter.

And especially as we look at today’s miracle of the resurrection of Jairus’s daughter, who died. You could live your whole life as a “good moral person” and ignore who Jesus is.

You could miss the whole point of these stories and you could die. Death could come out of nowhere and it would be way too late and you would be separated from God for all eternity.  Because you missed who Jesus is. The one who can save you from death which is our greatest enemy.

 And I want to be sensitive this morning, because today’s message starts off as kind of as a bummer. We’re going to be looking at the reality of death. And death is a painful and hard subject to discuss. It’s difficult. And it’s impacted everyone in this room. So, my purpose is not to bring up the past or present hurts and pains that come with losing a loved one. That is not my goal this morning.

So, hang in there with me, as we go on today, it will get better. There’s hope, because we’ll see that Jesus has authority and power even over death. He has authority over the greatest enemy that we face. And as Hebrews 2:14-15 says, that through Jesus’s death, he destroyed the one holding the power of death, that is the devil, so that he could free those, that’s all of us, who were held in slavery all their lives by the fear of death.

So let’s look at our passage. Matthew chapter 9:18-19

Read verse 18 & 19

We’re going to skip down to verse 23 because next week Pastor Chad will be preaching on verses 20-22, which honestly really I’m glad that I don’t have to do because that’s the text for mothers day. Anyways, look at verse 23 with me.

Read verse 23-26

 Let’s pray before we begin- Lord be with us this morning as we study your word together. Be with us as we discuss a difficult issue. Lord please be with those who may be dealing with hurt and sorrow from the loss of a loved one. And Lord help us to understand this morning the reality of death, why it happens, and let us look to you to rescue us from our greatest enemy. We ask this by faith in Jesus name, amen.

Transition: Well, let’s look at our first point together, let’s talk about:

1st point: The reality of death.

In Hebrews 9:27 it says that “it is appointed for people to die one and after that, judgement”. And that’s the reality of death. That’s our reality. The reality of death is that we will all face it we have an appointment with it and we never know when it’s going to be our time. I mean how often do we contemplate our own deaths?

For many of us, especially those of us who are younger, we just go about our lives, busy, going to school, working, raising our families never even thinking about it. But if we do we think, “it wont happen until I’m old. I’m young and I’m healthy, I’ll worry about it down the road”.

And for some of you that reality might be closer than ever. And I bet for the man in our story today, he probably never thought he would be facing the death of his child. But death is a dark cloud that’s always hovering over us and our loved ones.

 So, as Matthew sets the seen for this miracle in verse 18, Jesus is having a discussion with some of John the Baptist’s followers who want to know why he and his disciples don’t fast like them.

And as he’s having this discussion, just out of nowhere a man, who’s only described as a leader in Matthew’s gospel, comes running up to him and out of desperation he knelt down before Jesus and said, “My daughter just died”. And pleading and begging with him, he says, “come and lay your hand on her, and she will live”.

And from Mark’s account of this story, we find out that this man was one of the leaders of the synagogue who was named Jairus. And as a synagogue leader more than likely he probably wasn’t supposed to have anything to do with Jesus.

Yet he came to Jesus and begged him, in mark 5:22 it says, “one of the synagogue leaders, named Jairus, came, and when he saw Jesus, he fell at his feet and begged him earnestly, “My little daughter is dying. Come and lay your hands on her so that she can get well and live”.

And from Lukes account of this same story, we find out that his daughter is only 12 years old and that she is his only daughter. In Luke 8:41-42 it says, “He fell down at Jesus’s feet and pleaded with him to come to his house, because he had an only daughter about twelve years old, and she was dying.

 Man, I couldn’t even imagine this situation; I couldn’t imagine the desperation that Jairus felt. And I hope that I never have to. I mean I, have 3 sons and two of them are 11 and 12. So. this story really hits home. I couldn’t even imagine what Jairus was going through. I couldn’t imagine the hopelessness, the fear, the worry and desperation that he was facing.

I mean, this shouldn’t be happening to a 12-year-old child, right? This kind of thing shouldn’t be happening to any child. She’s a sweet innocent little girl. She has her whole life ahead of her. She’s supposed to grow up and get married someday and have a little family of her own.

 And this shouldn’t be happening to a father. This shouldn’t be happening to a man who’s a local synagogue leader. He’s a religious man. He’s a good man. And this is his only daughter who he loves and cherishes. His sweet little girl. His pride and joy. Daddy’s girl.

This shouldn’t be happening to this perfect little family and they shouldn’t be experiencing this. This tragedy should have never fell upon them.

But death doesn’t discriminate. We are all vulnerable. It could happen at any time to any one of us. It will affect anyone and everyone. From the unborn, the most innocent children - to the elderly. Death is a reality. And death is our greatest enemy. That’s the reality of death.

 But why? Why is it have to be this way? Why does there have to be so much pain, why does there have to be so much hurt and so much sorrow. Why do we have to lose a loved one?

And that’s a question that the world can never truly answer. It’s a question that the world will leave you without any hope.  It’s a question that apart from knowing the biblical reason you will never get an answer that will satisfy you; Why do people die?

The world’s answers vary. Here’s a few of the reasons that I found with a little research, it’s due to:

-Biological aging, you just get old and parts start to wear out. There’s some truth too that, my back hurts and it never used to.

-It’s due to Cellular limits, and not your cell phone, which is probably killing you as well. But your cells just can’t replace themselves fast enough and so your vital organs stop functioning.

Another reason is:

-It’s an evolutionary strategy and ecological balance; death allows older generations to get out of the way of the younger generations. Would you just die already old people so us younger people can live our lives?

-It’s environmental factors, external causes like disease and starvation that cause death.

 Transition: But why? None of those explanations give us the actual answer. Why does it happen? Why does it happen to children like Jairus’s daughter? Well, let’s look at our key truth this morning. A truth that we can find in the Word of God. We can find the answer in our bibles because:

Key truth: There’s a reason for the reality of death. X2

And it starts in the very beginning. When God created the world death was not even a reality. In fact, we were created to be eternal beings. We were meant to live forever. But we messed it up. God had made everything good and perfect, but we ruined it. And now we live in a broken and fallen world.

And we ruined it because when Adam and Eve had sinned by disobeying God and then everything changed. What was good, what was perfect had now become a mess.

Because God told Adam in Genesis 2:16, “You are free to eat from any tree of the garden, but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for on the day you eat from it, you will certainly die”. And they didn’t listen and sin and death entered into a good and perfect world and messed everything up.

Now we know they didn’t die immediately because Adam lived to 930 years old before he died. But after their sin then a domino effect of sin and death began in the world. Right away the first murder took place between two of Adam and eve’s children, Cain killed his brother Abel.

 And from there on out mankind became so wicked and so full of sin that God said in Genesis 6:6, “that the Lord regretted that he had made man on the earth and he was deeply grieved because every inclination of the human mind was nothing but evil all the time”  

And that’s because all of humanity inherited that sin that brought death from Adam and Eve. It’s called the doctrine of original sin. We are all born into sin. It’s like genetics that are passed down, sin was passed down to every generation. It’s like we’re infected with a genetic sin disorder.

And if you don’t think that’s true, if you have kids or have even been around some kids for just a moment trust me, you won’t deny the doctrine of original sin. Remember those three boys that I have. Our house is full of sin non-stop!

In Romans 5:12 were told, “Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, in this way death spread to all people because all sinned. And that’s the reason for the reality of death. We have all inherited Adam’s sin.

And it affects everyone because Romans 3:23 says, “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” And Romans 6:23 says, “for the wages of sin is death”, we are literally being paid in death for our sins. We earn our wage.

And maybe that sounds like God is being harsh. But it’s our fault. It’s our sins, our choices, our actions that lead to death. Because we sin in word, by the things we say.  We sin in thought, by the things that we think. And we sin in deed, by the things we do.

And we can’t blame that on Adam and Eve because like them, we chose to rebel against God. If we were honest, which not being honest is a sin, we enjoyed our sinful life.

And because of sin we don’t just face physical death, but while we are alive, our sin causes us to be spiritually dead and separated from God. That’s what happened to Adam and eve when they sinned, yes, they physically died but not immediately. But they were spiritually dead right away. Their perfect relationship with God was broken. And so is ours apart from Christ’s reconciliation.

Listen to our true reality when we are not in Christ. This is from Ephesians chapter 2: “And you were dead in your trespasses and sins in which you previously lived according to the ways of this world, according to the ruler of the power of the air, the spirit now working in the disobedient. We too all previously lived among them in our fleshly desires, carrying out the inclinations of our flesh and thoughts, and we were by nature children under wrath as the others were also”.

And that’s the reality, not only do we die a physical death, but we are also spiritually dead because of sin. Apart from Jesus we’re under the rule of the Devil who holds the power of death. And we did what we wanted and sought after our own desires and not a God’s and because of that we were destined for God’s wrath and that’s the reason for the reality of death.

But there’s hope, just like there was hope for Jairus’s daughter, there is hope for us. Because we don’t want to die. None of us want to die, we need that hope because in Ecclesiastes 3:11 it says “that God has put eternity in our hearts”.

We desire to live. We desire to live with God for all eternity, we desire for everything to be like it was when God had created the world before sin and death!

Romans 8:22 it says, “For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together with labor pains until now”. All of creation has been groaning for everything to be made right again. Because we know that this isn’t the way things are supposed to be. We weren’t created to die. We need to be rescued from death.

Transition: So even though we face the reality of death there is hope and we can find the way to be rescued from death. Let’s look at our second point this morning.

2nd point: The rescue from death.

Read 23-26

We can be rescued form death because there is a rescuer. We see who it is right here in verse 23, “when Jesus came to the leaders house”. Jesus is the rescue from death. He’s the only one who could rescue this little girl and Jairus knew this. Jairus had faith that Jesus was able to save his little girl from certain death.

Because he’s heard about who Jesus is, he’s heard about the miracles, he knew there is no one else who had the kind of authority and power that Jesus had and that’s why he knelt down before him and begged him, “If you can just lay your hands on her she will live”!

And Jesus responded by going with Jairus to his house. Because Jesus is compassionate. He cares about us. Because he knows that it was never supposed to be this way. Sin and death were never supposed to have any power over us. Death was never supposed to happen. Children were never supposed to die!

If there’s any doubt that this girl wasn’t dead when Jesus arrived, Matthew included the fact that the mourners started to laugh at him when he said she was not dead but only asleep. She wasn’t just taking a nap, she wasn’t just unconscious, she was dead. She was dead dead.  That’s why they were laughing, they were like “what are you talking about Jesus, she’s not asleep, she’s dead”.

But they missed the point of what Jesus was saying. And they missed who Jesus was. He said she was asleep because like sleep death is only temporary. Death is not final and Jesus was about to prove that to them. And that is true for us. Death is not final. That’s not all there is in life to look forward to. We don’t just live, exist, and die. That’s not our purpose in this life.

We can have hope because Jesus has power over death. Look at verse 25, it says, “after the crowd had been put outside, he went in and took her by the hand, and the girl got up”. Jesus only had to take her by the hand, and he was able to restore her back to life. Just the presence and power of Jesus restored her back to life.

And the point of this miracle is that it foreshadows Jesus’s power over his own death. Because not only was Jesus able to raise Jairus’s daughter back to life, but Jesus himself would die on a cross and go to the grave, but the death he died would not be final. It was only temporary.

Because Jesus has the authority and power to raise himself from the dead. In John 10:17 & 18, Jesus said, “I lay down my life so that I may take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down on my own. I have the right to lay it down, and I have the right to take it up again”

So, Jesus has the power to not only raise himself from the dead, he has the power to raise you and I from the dead!

And it was through Jesus’s own death and resurrection that he became the rescue from death! He willingly died for us so that through his death and resurrection that he could triumph over sin and death and guarantee our forgiveness and give us life.  

That we would no longer be separated from God like Adam and Eve. Because remember we were spiritually dead and separated from God just like they were.

His death and resurrection restored the broken relationship between us and God. And not only that, he restored God’s original design for us to be eternal beings. In Christ we have eternal life now with the promise of the resurrection, the same resurrection that Jesus had.

In 2nd Timothy 1:10 it says that “Jesus Christ has appeared to abolished death and bring life and immortality to light through the gospel”. And it is through the gospel, the good news of Jesus’s payment for our sins by dying a death that he didn’t deserve, to pay a debt that we couldn’t pay, so that we could be forgiven. And then he rose from the grave so that he would become the rescue from death.

And all who put their faith and trust in Jesus’s death and resurrection for the payment of their sins will receive eternal life. In John 11:25 Jesus said, “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me, even if he dies, will live. Everyone who lives and believes in me will never die”.

So, this morning, if you are gripped by the fear of death. If you know that you are dead in your trespasses and sins and you’re not right with God. Then have a heart and faith like Jairus.

Because Jairus displayed what saving faith really looks like. He knelt before Jesus, he humbled himself, even though he was a synagogue leader who, remember, was supposed to have nothing to do with Jesus, but he cried out to him, “please save my daughter, I believe you can do it”.

Be like Jairus, go before the Lord, cry out to him and believe that Jesus laid down his life for you. Believe that he can rescue you, believe that he can set you free from sin and death, and believe that you are alive in Christ and that you have the hope of eternal life.

Rely on Jesus and he will rescue you!

And for all us who are already in Christ, let’s remember that we didn’t overcome our enemy of sin and death apart from what Christ did on the cross. Like Jairus, we have to rely on Jesus to rescue us!  And that’s our key truth this morning.

Key truth: Rely on Jesus and he will rescue you. X2

 Communion: As we come to a close this morning we’re going to take some time to reflect and remember what Christ has done for us through the cross.  So, grab the elements. And as we partake in communion together, we are actually declaring Jesus’s death until he returns. And here’s the thing, when he returns, he will abolish our greatest enemy, death.

And when that happens, we will declare, “death has been swallowed up in victory”. Where death is your victory? Where death is your sting? The sting of death is sin, and

the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us victory through our Lord Jesus Christ”.

So, let’s take a moment right where we are to pray and to reflect  and remember the cross, where our victory was secured and let’s thank him this morning. Let’s thank him that we can rely on him to rescue us from sin and death. Let’s pray.

1st Corinthians 11:23-26, “On the night when he was betrayed, the Lord Jesus took bread, (and the bread that he took was unleavened bread which meant it had no yeast. Because yeast symbolized sin, so this bread symbolized his sinless body) and when he had given thanks, Jesus broke it, and said, “this is my body, which is broken for you. Do this in remembrance of me”

 “In the same way also he took the cup, after supper, and said, “this cup is the new covenant in my blood. The cup symbolized God’s wrath which Jesus took upon himself in our place. Even though he pleaded with God, “My father, if it is possible, let this cup pass form me. Yet not as I will, but as you will. And he willingly poured out his blood for our forgiveness. So, as often as we drink it, let’s do it in  remembrance of him”.

“For as often as we eat this bread and drink the cup, we proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes”.

Lets pray together – Lord we thank you that you are the rescue from death. Though we face that reality every day, it is no longer final for us. We thank you for laying down your life for us. That you went to the cross and that you rose from the grave so that you could defeat sin and death on our behalf and restore us from our fallen broken state to being alive in you. Lord let us rely on you every day to be our rescue and let us be humble trusting in you for our forgiveness and our salvation. May we walk in a way that honors and glorifies you. In Jesus name, Amen.