Classic Sermon 6046: the Best Physician of All

The Gospel according to Saint Mark, Chapter 5. We are going to read beginning with verse 21 through verse 34. We are going to meditate for a moment on this very special woman, full of faith: she touches Jesus’ garment and receives healing and salvation.

The word of the Lord says: “When Jesus had crossed over again by boat to the other side, a great multitude gathered around Him, and He was by the sea. And one of the rulers of the synagogue, named Jairus, came, and when he saw Him, he fell at His feet; and he pleaded earnestly with Him, saying, ‘My daughter is at the point of death. Come and lay Your hands on her so that she may be saved, and she will live.’ So He went with him, and a great multitude followed Him and pressed around Him. But a woman who had suffered from a flow of blood for twelve years, and had suffered greatly at the hands of many physicians and spent all that she had and gained nothing from it, but instead grew worse—when she heard about Jesus, she came from behind through the crowd and touched His garment, for she said, ‘If I touch only His hand, I will be saved.’

Immediately the source of her bleeding dried up, and she felt in her body that she was healed of that affliction. Then Jesus, knowing within Himself that power had gone out from Him, turned around toward the crowd and said, ‘Who touched My garments?’ His disciples said to Him, ‘You see the multitude pressing around You, and You say, “Who touched Me?”’ But He looked around to see who had done this. Then the woman, fearing and trembling, knowing what had been done in her, came and fell down before Him and told Him the whole truth. And He said to her, ‘Daughter, your faith has saved you. Go in peace and be healed of your affliction.’” May the Lord bless His word.

We have been looking at different people who, throughout the Gospels, came face-to-face with the person of Jesus and whose lives were transformed, whether through an extended dialogue with Him, as in the cases of the Samaritan woman and Nicodemus, whom we examined over the last two weeks, or through a very brief but decisive encounter in a moment of crisis. We invite ourselves to see Christ as the source of all hope, as the source of every aspiration for transformation in our lives. Brothers and sisters, I ask you to observe how different people throughout the pages of the Gospel come to the Lord with different kinds of problems.

Some of them seem insoluble, without a solution, without any possibility of change, and yet, through a restorative encounter with the Lord, their weeping was transformed into a song of joy, their illness was turned into health, and their spiritual need was answered with a word of comfort, hope, and satisfaction.

And today we have this person, this woman who suffered for many long years from a flow of blood, and we could continue making that comparison with Nicodemus and the Samaritan woman. And here, brothers and sisters, we can see how, in a sense, the two dimensions embodied by Nicodemus and the Samaritan woman come together in the account we have just read.

In a single account, we find the two extremes of humanity. In the case of the Samaritan woman, we saw a fallen woman, morally compromised, perhaps isolated from her community because of conduct that was known in a small town. She was a woman with little knowledge of Scripture but in need of Jesus Christ, and the Lord meets her at her point of need, speaks with her, and gently but very firmly leads her toward a revelation: that He is the promised Messiah.

In Nicodemus we see a man who is the complete opposite. A man who was, after all, a Pharisee, a prominent man, perhaps a member of the Sanhedrin—a righteous man of good reputation, probably blameless in the eyes of the society in which he moved, respected, and perhaps even feared.

A man who walked the straight path, who was surely very well versed in the Scriptures and very knowledgeable about the religious aspects of his faith, yet who was also profoundly in need of a fuller revelation of who Jesus Christ is.

And the Lord also leads Nicodemus—somewhat more abruptly, as we saw from His very response, which might perhaps have seemed curt to the Pharisee who had courteously approached this teacher with whom, as he saw it, God was—but the Lord also leads Nicodemus through a process of growing awareness until He finally tells him: ‘Just as the bronze serpent was lifted up before the Jews who were being bitten by fiery serpents, and they looked and were healed, so too must I, by implication, the Son of Man, be lifted up before the eyes of mankind and exalted as the Christ, so that by looking at Me they may receive healing and salvation.’

But also lifted up—figuratively—as He would one day be lifted up on the Cross. It is an image deeply imbued with associations. He too would one day be lifted up on the Cross, and that death as well—that lifting of Him upon the tree—would also bring salvation. Today we look to that cross to receive our healing and our salvation.

And as Lisette was also pointing out, that is not all. The drama continues, and one day the Lord Jesus Christ will also be lifted up upon a completely new and different piece of wood. He will be lifted up, worshiped, and acknowledged by all humanity as mankind’s Savior. Those who refused to acknowledge Him willingly will have to acknowledge Him unwillingly; they will have to bow their heads and acknowledge Christ as Lord and Savior.

And I believe that the whole Gospel is there, and that everything we might say over the coming Sundays will actually be contained within those two extremes exemplified by the Samaritan woman and Nicodemus. The rest will be an elaboration and a reinforcement of those fundamental truths. And that is why it seems logical to me to continue in sequence and now enter the point where these two extremes meet and converse with each other within the same text. But I am not so interested in focusing on Jairus; instead, I simply want to use him as a background against which this woman and her faith may stand out with crystal clarity.

We see that the account begins as so many accounts in Scripture begin—and, in fact, as so many accounts in human life, in mankind’s natural life, also begin. A powerful man, one of the rulers of the synagogue, whose name is Jairus, comes before Jesus Christ.

This man has a great need: his daughter—despite his great power, great influence, and religious knowledge—his daughter is dying; she is at the point of death. Another of the Gospels presents it in an even more urgent way, as though combining the two events, because later in this account people come and tell him that his daughter has already died. But the other evangelist says that Jairus approached Jesus and told Him, ‘My daughter is already dead. But You can do what is necessary for her to live.’

But the fact is that Jairus is suffering under a great need, and he approaches the Lord.

I see this as the natural way in which human stories unfold, because when one looks at ordinary society, what happens? When a powerful man is in need, he generally knows where to go. He has the necessary resources, or the necessary knowledge and connections; he goes to the person who can solve his problem, appeals to that person, and because of his position and influence, perhaps because of the eloquence with which he can express his need, and because he is able to reach the right person, he receives the answer he needs.

But this is not an account like any other; rather, this account seeks to reveal something even deeper to us.

You will remember, brothers and sisters, that all the Gospels were written with a very definite purpose in mind. First, they were directed by the Holy Spirit, who wanted to leave us a very rich revelation of the person and ministry of Jesus. And the way the evangelist Mark, directed by the Holy Spirit, develops the account—and the fact that the Lord Himself directed these events so that these two accounts and these two events would be joined into one—is meant to show us something about the person of Jesus: His way of ministering.

They seek to give us indications and directions about what we should do in situations similar to these. And I believe the first lesson the Lord has directed us to consider is that in the Lord, the rich and powerful and those who have no resources whatsoever, no renown, fame, or influence in society, are all made equal before the person of Jesus; and that the Lord says, ‘The one who comes to Me I will by no means cast out.’

Whoever approaches Me with a sincere need, with a needy heart: ‘Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden. I will give you rest.’

The Lord calls every one of us who are here, regardless of your condition. Whether you have been coming to church for many years, whether you are a faithful tither and a faithful servant of God in different ways, or a faithful worker in the affairs of the church.

That person is in the same condition as perhaps you who have come to church today for the first time and do not know the Bible well. Perhaps you do not even understand the figurative language of Scripture; perhaps you do not know how to pray. But if your faith is placed in Jesus Christ, there is hope for you too. The Lord wants to have an encounter with you. The Lord wants to speak with you.

Glory to the Lord that powerful encounters with Jesus Christ are not reserved for theologians, for those who have attended seminary, or for those who have spent their entire lives searching the Scriptures. Although all these things—glory to the Lord—are beautiful, necessary, and good, what connects us with Jesus Christ is a living faith, a natural faith, a sincere faith.

That is why the Lord has made things, in a sense, very simple: if we believe in our heart and confess with our mouth, we are saved. If we approach the Lord with a contrite and humbled heart, we will find in the Lord a great willingness to heal and to save. And this woman, with her simple faith, seems to inject herself into Jesus’ path.

And I believe this is another of the threads this text invites us to become aware of and to focus upon: the fact that—if I am correctly interpreting the implications of the text—we are taught that we can even change, although this may sound heretical to a certain extent, the mind of God; we can change His dispositions. I understand that human language fails us in these matters.

It is not that God did not know this was going to happen or anything like that, but it strikes and moves me that, as the text tells us, the Lord is very focused on this man’s need. He is going to attend to a human being in need, whose situation is urgent.

There is great urgency, a great emergency, and the Lord goes with His mind intently focused on getting there and restoring Jairus’s daughter by His power. And this woman comes like an arrow and injects herself into the body of the account, and you see that the Lord Jesus Christ—Mark describes Him as though He is surprised in His humanity, in His human dimension—the Lord Jesus Christ is also jolted by this woman, and Scripture presents it as though she drew something out of the Lord.

That is there in the text, and it is not there so that we may overinterpret it, but so that we may understand the extent to which we have authority before God when our faith is sufficiently focused and powerful and when we are walking within the bounds of God’s character.

We cannot change God in terms of His character, brothers and sisters, or His general, universal purpose. But the Lord delights when we come before Him standing firmly upon His Word, because He invites us to come with confident faith and say, ‘Father, I have a terrible need, and if it is not met, I am going to die. I need You.’

The Lord honors that, brothers and sisters. Let us not be afraid to deal with the Lord in such strong terms at times. There is a balance that the Church of Jesus Christ must learn in these matters. I believe there has also been far too much abuse through the preaching of Healing and Prosperity, as they say: ‘Name it and claim it’—name it, claim it, and it is yours.

The gospel of prosperity and riches is often a covert way of concealing materialism and even witchcraft: wanting to turn the saint upside down and wanting to rob God of certain things. Because if we use the right formula, He has to answer me. But many times, in fleeing from that false theology, we have gone to the opposite extreme of simply saying, ‘Well, Lord, if You wish. Amen,’ and ‘Your will be done,’ and adopting a passive attitude—one that, in my view, is ultimately unproductive before the Lord.

Between those two extremes—total passivity and an unproductive pietism that simply says, ‘Well, Lord, You know what I need, so why pray? My life is in Your hands. Have mercy on me. Your will be done’—

between those two extremes there is a very narrow but very secure point at which we, like Jacob, can approach the presence of God and enter into a loving struggle with God, into a dialogue of prayer and a pursuit of divine love and mercy; and God is also glorified, brothers and sisters, in that ardent pursuit.

As long as that ardent pursuit is grounded in an understanding that God is sovereign and that God knows all things. In the end, He has the final word, and when that final word has been given, we will say, ‘Lord, thank You. May Your purpose be fulfilled in my life.’

And when another crisis, another need, comes, we will once again proclaim the power of God, we will put on all our armor again, and we will keep fighting because we believe in that faithful God; and for those moments when God decides to give a “no,” there are also powerful “yeses”: we have seen how God has brought us out of crises in our lives, and that is why we come to the altar, and that is why we proclaim the mercy of God, and the people of God will always be an invincible people who will continue proclaiming the goodness of God.

And as the writer says: “I know that my Redeemer lives, and even though I am dead, I know that I will be able to see Him. I will trust in His mercy.”

All of us, in one sense or another, are Job’s brothers; we are all engaged in a hand-to-hand struggle to receive God’s blessings. And again and again in the Gospels I see these anguished beings—let us call them that—beings who are anguished brothers of the existentialist Kierkegaard, who was consumed by anxiety; I do not believe that is the right spirit either. But perhaps I identify with them, perhaps because one finds affinity in these things, and sometimes the characters with whom we associate reveal a great deal about our personality.

But I love these anguished beings, like this woman with a terrible need. She had nothing to lose. She put all her chips on the table and said, “If I perish, let me perish, and here I go. I am going to an encounter with the Lord Jesus,” and she came out victorious.

And we can think of Zacchaeus; we can think of the Syrophoenician woman—returning to this matter of dialogues and loving struggles with Jesus Christ; look at the Syrophoenician woman. We will study her at some point later. This woman has a terrible need: her daughter is in crisis, and she comes to Jesus Christ, and Jesus Christ says to her, “Do not bother me; you are not one of the people of Israel, and I have been called—even though He had said precisely the opposite—only to the children of Israel.”

And this woman does not allow herself to be discouraged by that slight push the Lord Jesus Christ gives her—and it was not so slight, because it was almost an insult: “It is not right to give the children’s food to the dogs.” And that same woman, in a sense, turns Jesus Christ’s phrase against Jesus Christ Himself and says to Him, “Yes, Lord, but if that is the way You want to see it, even the little dogs have the right to eat the crumbs that fall from the table.” And the Lord says, “Woman, because of that word, your daughter is healed.”

And once again I see that dynamic of struggle, of seeking. Brothers and sisters, the Lord wants passionate men and women; the Lord wants men and women who are clear about why they are seeking God and in whom they have believed...

Now women like these and characters like these invite us again and again to reconsider: Why do we serve the Lord? Is my faith, is my conception of Jesus Christ, sufficiently well defined for me to pursue Him in an embodied, committed, and total way?

Because that is the attitude that will bring blessing into your life, and that is why I believe that throughout Scripture we see those anguished characters who are there struggling and panting, as the psalmist says: “As the deer pants for the streams of water, so my soul cries out for You, O God!”

What image could be more full of intensity than that? My soul thirsts for the living God.

Are we seeking Jesus Christ with that thirst? Many times, brothers and sisters, we have to purify our faith. It is filled with so many different things that dilute and confuse it. Why are you here today? Because of the pastor, because of a family obligation, out of inertia, because you have come on other occasions? Truly ask yourself.

Or are you here wanting to receive power from the Lord Jesus?

If your faith is clear, and if you are here seeking that blessing from God, God will speak into your life. God will touch you; God will transform you. God will give you the solution to your problem. So, as we said, this woman thrusts herself in and interrupts the course of the dialogue; she alters Jesus’ agenda, so to speak, and with one sentence changes the entire direction of the situation. But a woman—those “buts” in Scripture sometimes make us tremble when they appear—but a woman who had suffered from a flow of blood for twelve years, when she heard about Jesus, came through the crowd and approached Him.

Contrasts. Jairus, a man; this woman, simply because she was a woman, a second-class citizen. Jairus has a name—Jairus; this woman’s name is not even mentioned, completely anonymous.

Hello, God bless you; this is Pastor Roberto Miranda speaking. Thank you for listening to our messages, and it gives us great joy to know that this program is being a blessing to your life. I want to leave you with Moses’ words of blessing to the people of Israel: “May Jehovah bless you and keep you; may Jehovah make His face shine upon you and be merciful to you. May Jehovah lift up His face upon you and give you peace.”

It is a privilege for me to be part of your life.

I hope you will stay tuned to our program, “An Appointment with Christ.” I bless you in the name of Jesus.

Jairus, a ruler of the synagogue, recognized; this woman, poor and needy, had spent everything she had on doctors. Jairus, religious; this woman, unclean, suffered from a flow of blood—a condition that perhaps you may not even know about. She suffered from continuous bleeding; twelve years had passed. And this illness was a double-edged sword: on the one hand, it was physically debilitating and terrible in what it did to the body—this person would have suffered from continual anemia—and, on the other hand, it was also horrible because it made this person an outcast. Because of the rites of the law and the requirements of Jewish law, she was not fit to be among clean people, ritually speaking.

According to the law—because this is what the Old Testament established—even her touch was unclean. This woman was in a continual state of uncleanness, technically and legally, and therefore her presence and her person were unwelcome in religious society, in respectable society. Her touch was like the touch of a dead person or a leper; she was persona non grata, as they say. She was not supposed to be in that situation; according to the law, she was not supposed to touch a rabbi, above all, because her touch made him unclean.

It was a pressing situation, one that reminds us so much of the situation of so many people. Perhaps, in a sense, you are in something similar. The wonderful thing is that we are taught something here: the law divides, but Christ reconciles.

Religion, and the requirements of “good” people, in quotation marks, often tend to make us feel unclean. Perhaps you are here suffering from some spiritual bondage; perhaps there is some unclean habit in your life; perhaps there is some moral condition that makes you feel that you are, in a sense, under penalty of death, perhaps offending God by your presence.

Let me tell you that the Lord is glad you are here today. The Lord is glad that you have a need—not glad because you are in need, but glad because that need you have enables Him to fulfill the purpose for which He came. He said, “I have come not for the healthy; I have come for the sick. I have come to restore the fallen. I have come to bring deliverance to the oppressed.” And the Lord Jesus Christ tells you today that religion has no power to separate you from Him.

The law cannot do that. If you seek Him and seek reconciliation in Him, He is powerful enough to reconcile you with God, and that is also one of the threads of this text. It invites us to consider that no matter what our spiritual or physical condition may be, or whatever it may be, in the Lord there is hope; in the Lord there is great mercy. His very nature, as we see here, beyond any dialogue that we may enter into with Him—His very being makes Him attentive and ready to respond to the needs of the person who approaches Him with urgency and need.

There is something else that intrigues me about this passage. It says that “for twelve years she had suffered from a flow of blood and had suffered much under many physicians and spent everything she had, and nothing had helped; rather, she was getting worse.”

Apparently, studies have been done on all the foolish things doctors of that time devised to remedy this condition, and apparently there was a long list of possible remedies, some of them entirely implausible and ridiculous.

But apparently this woman had exhausted every possibility; she had gone to every doctor. Who knows—perhaps this woman had once had money and exhausted all her wealth seeking a solution on the human level. She looked to science and did not find the solution she needed.

For twelve years she had suffered from the illness. We can draw two little things from that: for those twelve years, this woman remained sad and suffering until she had a liberating encounter with Jesus Christ.

How old is your problem? How many years have you been praying for your husband or wife? How many years have you carried the burden of a difficult or troubled marriage? How many years have you had an illness that is perhaps robbing you of your enjoyment of life or your peace? How many years have you had some secret need that you have brought before the Lord again and again?

Even before Jesus Christ, and the Lord has still told you: “My grace is enough. I have already been waiting,” and perhaps you think that there is no longer any solution, that there is no longer any answer, that there is no longer any way out for you. No matter how long you have been praying before God, keep trusting in the Lord; keep bringing your need before God. Because you do not know how much time, for some reason that only He knows, will have to pass before He gives the answer to your need.

The people of God must be an insistent people, a people who remain there seeking the Lord. This morning I was thinking about the paralytic at Bethesda. He had been paralyzed for thirty-eight years, until the Lord approached him and touched him.

I was thinking about this bent-over woman; I believe it was eighteen or twenty-eight years that she had been, as it says, “under Satan’s burden,” the Lord Jesus Christ says, and in His time the Lord touched her—and there are so many other examples, brothers and sisters. We cannot grow weary; we have to come before the Lord again and again, renewing our petition every day. I have petitions before the Lord that, every day, with obedience and an almost unhealthy delight, I remind the Lord of again: “Lord, answer me; Lord, I need You.” And until the day I die, if I do not see the answers, I will continue reminding the Lord and also giving Him thanks, because I know that He is merciful.

Let us not grow weary, brothers and sisters, of bringing our needs before the Lord; let us not grow weary of crying out before that merciful and powerful Christ.

But there is something else about this. It says that “nothing had helped; rather, she was getting worse,” and I felt moved to think about this world—that this woman is also a symbol of this society, of humanity throughout the ages, although I believe modern humanity embodies this in a much more exquisite and expressive way. It is seeking the solution to its problems in so many different things, so many doctors whom humanity consults to address its problems.

Right now, as we speak, the president-elect of the United States may be sitting somewhere. Perhaps he is playing golf, but I prefer to picture him—for the convenience of my sermon—seated at a very long, oval table with his advisers, trying to finalize his plans for solving his nation’s problems.

Every so often, Time magazine features the individuals he has appointed to different positions, or the people who will play a key role in regulating the economy and the political and social life of this country. And I also think of George Bush, perhaps somewhere else licking his wounds and packing his things, putting away his paintings and everything that characterized his years in the presidency, along with a number of cabinet members and public figures who stood in the glare of the cameras for many years and were Washington’s darlings and favored ones.

Now many of them are depressed, wondering to whom they will send their résumés so that they can get on with life again. And I think about this image of those who leave and those who enter, and the solutions one has tried to provide and another will now try to provide as well. And then I think about the millions of people in this society, and I see how the problems of our society grow worse with every passing day, and the problems seem more and more difficult to solve.

Despair seems to be taking on more and more substance in this nation, and I can already look ahead and see someone else renewing the same ritual of once again making promises that he himself knows deep down he will not be able to keep for the most part. But humanity has needs, and people demand and ask for new solutions. And although deep in their hearts they already have a subconscious sense that “after all, this is simply one more suitor who only wants to sleep with me,” even so, they too take part in the ritual and return once again to be wooed during the campaigns, to vote for the new Romeo who has also come to offer them solutions.

A short while ago I was reading a little article that said a very exhaustive study had been conducted across different countries—about twelve or fourteen of the world’s leading nations—and that it had established an interesting sequence: every ten years, from the beginning of the century through the 1990s, the young people of each of those ten-year periods—I am not sure about all the details of the study—but every new generation is more prone to depression than the one before it.

These groups, each ten years older than the last, were increasingly prone to depression as the century progressed. This was in the face of claims about humanity’s progress, great inventions, medical advances, and progress in psychiatry and medicine, as well as the supposed knowledge, at least, of the brain and human biology.

I know it is not knowledge of the human soul, because God possesses that knowledge. But as doctors invent new scalpels and new techniques and new things that make promises, it seems that the happiness, blessing, and grace human beings need to lubricate their processes keep slipping further and further away. Sand slipping through our fingers—that is the story of humanity: doctors whom we expect to solve our problems.

Look at the terrible drama of Eastern Europe: this great Soviet empire, with all its aspirations and all its initial sincerity, crumbling under its own weight like a feeble old man because it lacked the foundation that was the power of God. They wanted to remove God; they wanted to tear out and destroy the name of God and everything that smacked of the spirit from the confines of that nation. And over the years, despite all the muscle they amassed, all their aspirations came crashing down. And now what do they leave behind? Certainly what it says here: “Nothing had helped her; instead, she was worse.”

Ask those nations of Eastern Europe, which are tearing one another apart like ferocious beasts when the trainer who kept them in check with his whip leaves. Now they devour one another again, and all those ethnic hatreds that had been suppressed there since the First World War and the Second World War are now emerging again. They “were there,” suppressed for seventy or nearly eighty years, like a spring that you push down and hold there with a heavy boot. As soon as you remove the boot, the spring leaps back up with a vengeance.

Psychiatrists say that the things we suppress without resolving or working through them will, sooner or later, emerge among us with a vengeance. And what these people did was precisely to repress things and spray plenty of perfume over the hidden filth. When the charade finally ended and they gave up, it became clear that the situation was not merely the same, but worse.

Brother, I want to challenge you and myself to ask ourselves today: What doctors are you and I consulting? What things are we devising to mask the fact that we have not yet gone to the source, who is Christ Jesus? What experiments are we trying in order to conceal the fact that only in Jesus is there hope, that He alone is the way, the truth, and the life, and that no one has access to God except through Him?

That is why I have told you that I want to use this series to renew our vision of Jesus, because Jesus Christ often remains implicit in our sermons. We talk around Him; we talk above Him because we are grounded in Him; we talk beneath Him because we know that He is above us—but we do not look at Him.

And I believe that the churches—and we pastors and ministers and those of us who serve the Lord—must, as a spiritual discipline, choose certain days in our lives to say, “Lord, like Martha, I have been working around You and doing things for You, but I need to return and reconsider Your person.” For in Christ—in His person, in His word, in His methodology, in His ministry, in His very body, in His word—I find something mysterious, something that edifies intravenously.

Simply looking at Jesus—even if we do not understand everything He is saying or all the implications of His person—plugging ourselves into Him and His direct word gives us life and strengthens us. Brothers and sisters, let us never forget that Jesus Christ is the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end of all our aspirations.

And we may speak about all the truths of the Gospel, and we may search through every page of the Bible and find edification in different people, but the Lord Jesus Christ has a unique ability to strengthen us and bring hope into our lives, because His very way of being is eloquent. He is the Son of Man, who speaks to us in a language in which no one else can speak to us, and this woman embodies all these things.

Let us always know this: the answer, the resting place for all my aspirations, is in Christ Jesus. And today I want to challenge you to dust off the image of Jesus Christ and look at Him again, as the writer of Hebrews—I believe it is—says: that we should look to Jesus. I cannot remember the passage right now. It says, “Let us not grow weary to the point of fainting, but let us look at Jesus Christ in a different way.”

Hebrews chapter 12: “Therefore we also, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight and the sin that so easily besets us, and let us run with endurance the race that lies before us, fixing our eyes on Jesus.” Fixing our eyes on Jesus.

The author and finisher of faith says in verse 3: “Consider Him”—and I understand that the word translated into Spanish as “consider” means to focus your gaze in such a way that you exclude everything else—“consider Him who endured such hostility from sinners against Himself, so that you may not grow weary and faint in your souls.”

When you are in crisis, when you are in trouble, renew your gaze upon Jesus. Consider Jesus Christ; consider His claims; consider His message; consider His person; consider His record of healing. Take Him into your innermost being once again and begin once again to let Him dissolve within you so that He may fill every part of your being. That sustained meditation on Jesus Christ will bring healing to your life. It will bring blessing to your soul.

And when this woman hears about that Jesus, who speaks in a way the Pharisees do not speak, who does things the Pharisees cannot do, who promises things the doctors cannot do, she goes to Him as her only hope.

How important it is for people to know about Jesus! Let us tell them about Jesus; let us tell them that Jesus saves.

Even if they apparently are not listening to us, let us proclaim to them, “In Jesus Christ there is a solution to your problems.” Let us be a stirring presence in our factory, at our school, in our offices, wherever we may be, on the street—wherever it is. Brothers and sisters, let us be bearers of that liberating message. Because you never know whether one day that person, having heard about Jesus, will go and turn to Him in their need and, perhaps in a prayer in the darkness of their room, find there what they need from Jesus Christ.

Our part is to sow the seed; our part is to proclaim the gospel. Our part is to lift up the Son of Man so that everyone must look at Him, and then let them choose whether or not they want to keep looking. Proclaim Jesus Christ. This woman heard about Jesus. Who was that blessed person through whom this woman came to give us such a beautiful account as the one we are given today?

And she comes up from behind through the crowd and touches His garment.

What a marvelous variation in the Gospel account, because Nicodemus and the Samaritan woman meet Him face-to-face and have the pleasure of speaking at length and in an unhurried way with the Lord of Lords and King of Kings, and the Lord enters into an extended dialogue with them.

But this woman does not even have the blessing of approaching the Master as Jairus, the great Pharisee, approaches Him and saying, “Lord, I need Your help,” and so forth. She comes like a fugitive, like an elusive figure, like a moving shadow who does not expect great things. All she wants is to get in and out as quickly as possible so that no one will know about her need, and simply receive something from the Lord.

And she comes up from behind and cannot even touch His person. Another of the Gospel writers says that “she touched the edge of His garment,” as if pointing out that what you need is even the slightest encounter with Jesus Christ. There is such power in Him that if you merely touch the tip—as with a great source of electricity—simply making contact in some way with your spirit or your being, you will receive the blessing; you will receive the surge of grace that flows from Jesus Christ.

It does not matter how weak or imperfect your faith may be. Because I also see a little superstition in this woman: perhaps she is thinking that merely physically touching this mysterious being will be enough—just as there are people who believe that a picture will bring them the grace of such-and-such a saint, or that a symbol or a fetish will bring them grace. I see in this woman a little of a primitive faith, stripped of every adornment.

But sometimes, brothers and sisters, I find that we become so sophisticated that, like Hamlet, we are always asking, “To be or not to be”—to be or not to be, do I do it or not, do I take the plunge or not, do I believe or not?

And what if this happens, and what if that happens? But look at what this book says, and look at what this theologian says, and look at what this denomination says.

Brother, today there are so many theologies floating in the air and so many interpretations of the phenomena of faith that one risks becoming catatonic and motionless, merely searching for the common denominator and doing only what is safe and proven. We do not dare to take death-defying leaps, and many times we miss the blessing God wants to give us.

I confess to you that I am continually struggling against the demands of my reasoning, and I have had to retrace a long road to arrive at the little faith I have in the Lord, in His power, and in His word. I am continually fighting within myself to remove a host of things that I know hinder me in my pursuit of the Lord.

Because the intellect often tends to make us stumble more than it helps us. I thank the Lord that He has given us reason. But fallen reason often prevents us from seeing the Lord Jesus Christ with simplicity.

Nicodemus, with all his knowledge and all his theology, did not have what this Samaritan woman had, for example. When Christ said to her, “I am He, the One standing before you,” she immediately ran off and became an evangelist who brought that entire town to the knowledge of Jesus Christ.

What a contrast! The intellectual is often hindered by so many things. And we live in a marketplace where all of us are, in a sense, intellectuals compared with people from the Middle Ages or primitive people.

We have so much from television, from the magazines we have, from the education we have received, and from the things we see in the newspapers. You do not realize how greatly your reason and your critical capacity have been cultivated, exalted, and developed.

And when the Lord says to us, “Here I am; simply place your faith in Me, rest in Me,” that inner being begins to ask all kinds of questions, and we begin splitting hairs and miss the Lord’s grace that is visiting us at that moment.

Brothers and sisters, we must be daring; we must be creative. As they say, I would rather err in a great cause than be mediocre all my life. I would rather our congregation stake everything on great things, even if we must suffer a little, lose a little sleep, and become upset over some things, because we are searching for spiritual gold.

Earlier I pointed to the image of the conquistadors who ventured in and risked everything for glory, and we want spiritual glory too. But if we remain with what is safe, what is proven, the status quo, what neither challenges nor unsettles us, we will remain like this all our lives; we will not grow.

Brothers and sisters, I invite you—and I always invite myself—to be enterprising in the name of the Lord, because the Bible says, “None of those who trust in Him will be put to shame.” It is not that we should be reckless, but neither should we be so conservative that we become spiritual bourgeois.

Between those extremes there is a healthy measure of boldness, like Esther’s: “If I perish, I perish.” I am going in there, and if I am shown favor, glory to God; and if they cut off my head, glory to God. But I am going to fight. Launch out in the name of the Lord. Sometimes people do many things that I, as a pastor, must simply ponder like Mary and keep in my heart, because this person has had a burst of faith. And even if I do not fully understand it or my theology cannot accommodate it, go ahead, brother—glory to God.

And many times I see that it works, and I have had to learn from those bold people who dare to trust in the Lord’s grace and mercy.

So, brothers and sisters, we could say many other things, but what a precious outcome: this woman receives grace, receives the blessing, receives healing. Her gamble paid off. She dared, and we see that she overcame the crowd, overcame the obstacles, overcame the threat posed by her religion.

She touches Jesus’ garment, and how marvelous it is that “power has gone out from Me,” says the Lord Jesus Christ.

This woman stole—will you allow me to use that word?—power from Jesus Christ. Her faith drew something out of the Lord Jesus, because Christ’s inherent nature is to give grace, to give healing, to bring deliverance, to bring light into our lives. If you come into contact with Christ, brother or sister, the only thing that can happen is that blessing will come into your life.

Oh, yes, perhaps you are going to suffer; perhaps you are going to have to abandon many of the rigid or petrified structures in your life. Oh, yes, it is going to unsettle you. Oh, yes, you are going to face hardships you never anticipated. Oh, yes, you are going to have to pay a price, and you are going to have to leave behind things that are dear to you. Oh, yes, sometimes you are going to ask yourself, “What am I doing here?” But keep moving forward, because the Lord is going to bless you.

The believer’s path is an upward one. It will have its ups and downs, but we will always see that upward progression.

Over the years, we will see the blessing and grace of God visiting us and healing us, removing things and bringing water where the ground had been dry and hard. There the Lord, like an underground stream, will work from the inside out until we begin to see the shoots of life. Because that is Christ. He is life, He is light, He is the salt of the world, He is the door, He is the way, He is the truth. In Him we will indeed find what we need. He is not a human physician.

The Lord Jesus wants an intimate relationship with you. The Lord Jesus was not content merely for this woman to receive power from Him. He said, “Where is this woman? Where is this woman who, through her faith, has stood out from the rest of the crowd? Where is this woman whose primitive and simple faith has caused something to go out from Me—a special grace?”

The disciples could not understand this. If you draw near with that look of faith, you receive a blessing because the Lord wants to bless you. And the Lord wants to have a dialogue with you. Before you leave, the Lord wants to sit down with you and talk. The Lord could not let this woman leave. I believe that, in the long run, she might have felt a little guilty because she had forced something.

She would have felt incomplete. That process had not reached its proper culmination; something would have remained unresolved if that woman had left in that way.

Here I also see the Lord ministering to us at the different levels of our being. This woman had spent so many years as a solitary, anonymous, elusive figure. People dealt with her from a distance. And I believe that her soul was more twisted than her body, and that she had a well of sadness and loneliness within her that also needed to be addressed. And I believe that when the Lord addressed her at the level of her emotions and drew near to her, that woman spoke to Him; Scripture says that “she told Him the whole truth.”

Do you not see something here for the psychiatrist, the psychologist, and the counselor? Our people often need to tell us the whole truth. It is a kind of catharsis. We need a listening ear.

She must have told the Lord Jesus Christ not only, “Lord, I was the one who touched You,” but also about her years of loneliness and sadness, about how desperate she had felt and how she had to come before Him because she had no other recourse left. She must have told Him how she had felt a special grace visit her when she touched His garment.

And when the Lord says to her, “Yes, woman, your faith is powerful, and that faith has made you whole…” He has not merely healed you; that word is much more comprehensive, much more all-encompassing: “Your faith has made you whole.” The integrity of your person, the totality of your being, has been touched by that grace. Go in peace; you do not have to be afraid. There was healing for her.

Brothers and sisters, you and I need to be healed by Jesus Christ. We need to come before the Lord. If you have no one else to talk to, talk to Jesus Christ. He cares about your drama; He does not want merely a fleeting, hurried encounter. He also wants to rescue you from your anonymity.

In the Lord, in my prayers, I find rest. When I cannot find it anywhere else, I find rest in the Lord Jesus Christ. Use that resource God gives you. Tell the Lord the truth. He already knows it, but He wants to heal you as you bring that truth out and open it to the touch of the Holy Spirit, who will illuminate that truth—sometimes dark, harmful, and diseased—and restore it.

But let us open our lives to the Lord, because the Lord cares about every corner of our being. Let us not settle for a superficial religiosity; let us not settle for coming here for a little while. How I rejoice to see that moment of spontaneous worship! Unplanned, unrequested, unmanipulated.

God’s people carry many burdens, and when we feel the brush of Jesus Christ’s garment touch us, we leap. The Spirit within us, like the spirit of Elizabeth, leaps for joy, and we burst into song. Never be ashamed to express your love to the Lord in this way. Never be ashamed to cry out before Him, to sob before Him.

Oh, how I wish I could sob more often before my Lord Jesus Christ! Because those tears always bring healing.

Celebrate your life, celebrate your drama, even celebrate your tragedy before the Lord, and bring your burden to the Lord, because He cares to know about you.

May the Lord bless us.

Hello, this is Pastor Roberto Miranda speaking. God bless you. Thank you for tuning in and listening to this message. If you are interested in learning more about our ministry, we invite you to contact us through our website: www.leondejuda.org.

May God bless you, and remember: God always has a solution for your life. Blessings.