And as you're taking your seat, if you could turn your copy of the scriptures to Mark chapter five. In Mark five, we're going to be looking at a tale of two daughters, as it were. So this may seem maybe not so striking to us, but if you were living in first century Palestine, the fact that Jesus even interacts with, it's recorded that Jesus interacts with women at all would be surprising to you. But his ministry and his mercy and compassion and his love extend even to them here. And if we know that, of course, but it's good for us to see it here. So Mark chapter five, beginning in verse 21. And when Jesus had crossed again in the boat to the other side, a great crowd gathered about him, and he was beside the sea. Then came one of the rulers of the synagogue, Jairus by name, and seeing him, he fell at his feet. and implored him earnestly saying, my little daughter is at the point of death. Come and lay your hands on her so that she may be made well and live. And he went with them. And a great crowd followed him and thronged about him. And there was a woman who had had a discharge of blood for 12 years and who had suffered much under many physicians and had spent all that she had and was no better but rather grew worse. And she had heard the reports about Jesus and came up behind him in the crowd and touched his garment. For she said, if I touch even his garments, I will be made well. And immediately the flow of blood dried up and she felt in her body that she was healed of her disease. And Jesus, perceiving in himself that power had gone out from him, immediately turned about in the crowd and said, who touched my garments? And his disciples said to him, you see the crowd pressing around you and yet you say, who touched me? And he looked around to see who had done it. But the woman knowing what had happened to her came in fear and trembling and fell down before him and told him the whole truth. And he said to her, daughter, your faith has made you well. Go in peace and be healed of your disease. While he was still speaking, there came from the ruler's house some who said, your daughter is dead. Why trouble the teacher any further? But overhearing what they said, Jesus said to the ruler of the synagogue, do not fear, only believe. And he allowed no one to follow him except Peter and James and John, the brother of James. They came to the house of the ruler of the synagogue and Jesus saw a commotion, people weeping and wailing loudly. And when he had entered, he said to them, why are you making commotion and weeping? The child is not dead, but sleeping. And they laughed at him. But he put them all outside and took the child's father and mother and those who were with him and went in where the child was. Taking her by the hand, he said to her, Talitha Kumi, which means little girl, I say to you, arise. And immediately the girl got up and began walking, for she was 12 years of age. and they were immediately overcome with amazement. And he strictly charged them that no one should know of this and told them to give her something to eat. The grass withers and the flower falls, but the word of the Lord stands forever. Let's ask for his blessing once more. Lord Jesus Christ, Son of your Father, speak to us. Lord, we need you more than we'll ever know, so give yourself to us. Let us come to you in truth. Lord, I pray that you would make this word implanted in us so it would bear fruits unto righteousness, for we are so in desperately in need of it, the righteousness that belongs to faith that is sourced in you and you alone. Let the words of my mouth, Lord Jesus, and the meditations of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer. Amen. Mick Jagger of the Rolling Stones once sang that you can't always get what you want, but if you try sometime, you'll find that you get what you need. Now, that song, if you looked up the lyrics to it any time, or maybe if you learned it a long time ago, that song is rather depressing. And the fact that he sticks these lines next to the content of the verses of the song is sometimes shocking, but it shows us the aimlessness of not getting what we want, but of trying and maybe, just maybe finding getting what we need. You know, maybe we could sing it, you know, with the Beatles, I need you, you, you, and just go for it. but that's not going to work for us. You know, if you Google, you know, how to find out what I need, I did it just for fun, you're gonna get all sorts of results, all sorts of articles from WebMD to the people who sell crystals telling you exactly how to find out what you need. But if they could really tell us what we needed, all those websites would probably all say the same thing, but they don't. They're aimless, just as aimless as Mick Jagger. We find the average Joe does kind of know what he needs. The average Joe knows that he's in trouble, he knows that death is coming, and he knows that taxes are due on April 15th. That's about what we know that we need. But we really find when we strip all those things apart, the existential dread that we might have about living, at least unbelievers definitely have about living, that what we need is not a what, but a who. We need Jesus. So beloved, God is calling us this morning to see our true need and then come to Jesus. If you haven't come to Jesus, then you haven't truly seen what you really need. So it is that we see our true need, our need of our Savior, and then we come to Jesus. And we come to him in three ways. First, we approach him in humility. We reach out for him in distress. And thirdly, we cling to him in the face of death. We need our pride broken. We need help in our troubles. And we know that we will die. We need some way, somehow, some person to help us face it. All those things we find in Jesus. So in our text, first we see that we must approach Him in humility. We have a true need, we come to Jesus, and so we approach in humility. We see that humility in the man. So we have a ruler of the synagogue, our text says, Jairus by name. But seeing him, he fell at his feet. This is an odd scene, especially if you think about the reputation of this man, Jarius or Jairus. You know, you could call him, I came up with this, I'm sorry, the big dog in the synagogue. If you were the big dog in the synagogue, you were a community leader. The Jewish community was centered around the synagogue. And if you were a ruler of that, you were it. He was the big dog in the synagogue. And think back to Mark chapter three, when Jesus heals a man with a withered hand on the Sabbath and helps him straighten it out. He was probably in the crowd in Capernaum, who was waiting to see what he would do with a hardened heart. Now we see here in chapter five, the heart is not as hard as it was. In fact, the circumstances of his daughter, it looks like his only daughter, probably his world. I don't know how many of us have only had one child. I have four. Most of you have two or three. Some of you have four. But if your world is wrapped up in one child, and that child was near the point of death, you're gonna eat a healthy dose of humble pie. The man had witnessed the miracles of Jesus, and now that he was in great need of Jesus, all those former things, the things that were hardening his heart, they don't matter. What matters is that he sees he needs Jesus. He's a big dog, but it's a big problem. And I can understand the anxiety. That very first time, I had not been here terribly long. It was back in 2023 when Matthew went to the hospital for the first time for the virally induced asthma. And we didn't quite know that's what it was, but it was scary. Blood oxygen was low, having trouble breathing. And going to the hospital myself for the first time, meeting Erica there with Matthew, and Matthew was in bad shape, crying and just in... It was heartbreaking, and he was gonna be fine, and I knew he was gonna be fine. So you can imagine your only daughter, the point of death, this man is not okay, not one bit. He has a healthy dose of humble pie, but we see even in there a little bit of faith. He says, my little daughter is the point of death. Come lay your hands on her so that she may be made well. and live. He knows that if Jesus takes action, if Jesus's compassion moves towards his daughter and touches her, she will live. That's some faith. Sometimes it's these hard trials that if there was something blocking the flow of faith, like a dam up a river, where that trial will take that dam away and the faith will flow. And so it is with this man. And so Jesus, it just says the text, it just says he goes with him. Jesus agrees, yes, I will come. You need me, and I know that you need me, and I will go. Now unbelief, beloved, among us, takes various forms. Unbelief can sometimes look like hostility, it can look like avoidance, or unbelief can look like ambivalence. Eh, who cares, apathy. Unbelief will vary, but without humility, any kind of unbelief will keep Christ at arm's length. Unbelief will keep Christ at a social distance, as it were. So without humility, that is where we will keep Christ. And we don't know what sometimes God has ordained in trials in our lives to break that down, to come in closer. Do we see trials, beloved, as an opportunity to approach Christ, even if you do believe, to bring Christ even closer and make him more dear to your heart? That doesn't work for everybody. I mean, for many people who die in unbelief, even as their body breaks down, the riches get exhausted, they will play king of the hill on a sinking ship until the ship finally sinks them. We cannot afford to be blind to our true needs even as we truly suffer. Now it's not that this man had no needs before his daughter was near the point of death. His daughter getting sick and coming to that point simply took the veil off. This trial unmasked his need and we see the way that he talks to Jesus is that he recognizes that. It's not just humility to get something out of Jesus, it's humility saying, Jesus, you are my only hope. Not just to heal my daughter, but I see what I have done. My heart is not right, but I need you and she needs you too. Come lay your hand on her. Maybe there's a seed of something that looks like this, that says this is the son of God and I have treated him wrongly. Humility, we must approach him in humility. Now, Jesus goes with him, the crowds are pressing on in them, I'm sure in this father's mind he's seeing the slow progress they're making down the streets and he's, the anxiety's rising and probably more anxiety rises as we see that this, what would have been the first miracle is interrupted by another. But we see our true need and then we come to Jesus, we approach him in humility and we also reach out for him in distress like this woman does. So I'm not going to reread it for you, but this woman, she probably had some sort of a uterine hemorrhaging. And I only have one medical trained professional in here, but she has blood. And instead of blood once a month per regular human female activities that God has ordained, she has it all the time. So there's in the law, a provision for You know, once a woman finishes her cycle, she becomes ceremonially pure once again, and she rejoins the community, as it were. Well, so if this woman's bleeding all the time, there is no rejoining. She's not getting any better. This is a terrible, terrible thing for her to have. Every medical thing that she has tried has not worked. Jewish document called the Talmud actually lists what women should do in these circumstances, and there it's just so ridiculous. It borders on... It's medical stupidity. One of them was the ashes of an ostrich egg to carry it around in a bag. Come on. What on earth? She's not getting any better. She goes broke, and then not only did treatments like that or other things not help, it aggravated the condition. So she's ceremony unclean. She can't worship with her family, can't worship with her community. She cannot enter the synagogue. She can't really, if she was married, she probably got divorced over this. The man says, you know, no narrator relations, no children, forget it. I'm out of here. And they can do that in the society very easily. And so she's probably very lonely. She's definitely broke, still got her issue, and she's definitely lonely, and she's probably feeling very hopeless. And in one sense, the law for how the unclean were to be treated, we see in Leviticus, it worked. You know, in Romans 7, Paul says the law is holy, the commandment is holy, righteous, and good. He says, did that which is good bring death to me? He's talking about sin, but he says, by no means. It was sin producing death in me through what is good, in order that sin might be shown to be sin, and through the commandment might become sinful beyond all measure. This woman, in this case, she did not sin and have this issue, though some may have thought that in her community. But her being sick and having an issue showed that the power of sin, death, was slowly at work in her and slowly, literally, draining the life from her. The law worked because it showed her she had a huge problem and nothing could fix it. So hearing the reports of Jesus, she sees perhaps there is hope. Perhaps, just maybe, if I can touch the corner of his robe, I will be made well. So she hatches a plan. She sees her opportunity and she does it. See that in verse 27, she heard the reports about Jesus, came up behind him in the crowd and touched his garment. For she said, if I touch even his garments, I will be made well. And then it says, immediately the flow of blood dried up. She felt in her body that she was healed of her disease. Her faith, though it may have been mixed with some sort of error and possibly some superstition, was real. Was it a big faith? Maybe, maybe not. Maybe it was just the last option to her. But it was, it was there. It is not the great faith that saves us. It is just faith at all, even faith as small as a mustard seed, faith that says, if I just touch the hem of the garment, I will be made well. And she believes in Christ. And so it was done for her. Her faith, though concealed, was rewarded. And the risk she took, for the risk she took, she was in fact rewarded, but the risk is going to become evident here. In verse 30, Jesus says of Jesus, and perceiving in himself that power had gone out from him, immediately turned about in the crowd and said, who touched my garments? Now you may be wondering, well, Jesus is the son of God, why is he asking that question? Just very quickly, Jesus, two natures, divine and human, they are not mixed together. The divine nature communicates information to the human nature, but not everything in the will of the divine nature. So the divine nature had not communicated that to him. So he asked the question, who has touched my garments? To us, we'd be thinking that's crazy, but the disciples, they're also thinking that's also crazy. Jesus, there are dozens of people touching you. How can you ask who touched me? It's kind of disrespectful, but Jesus doesn't really respond to it. He's looking for who touched him. Because every time Jesus heals someone, he doesn't just perform the act and says, next, next. That's not how he works. He heals and he gives them a word confirming their faith and an opportunity for the woman to give glory to God. And so the woman sees this. It says, the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came in fear and trembling and fell down before him and told him the whole truth. She's fearing. and trembling because if you are unclean, ceremony unclean, if you touch someone else, you make them unclean. And the whole crowd, probably, that she touched, unclean as well. There's a lot of risk. Not only could she not worship, she couldn't get married, people who loved her and she loved had to keep their distance from her. She was risking really banishment for her community, for anger. So fearing and trembling, but she lays it all out. This is what happened. records everything that we just read. She relates. And Jesus says to her, daughter, child of God, daughter, your faith has made you well. Go in peace and be healed of your disease. Jesus confirms that faith. And so he follows the pattern of Psalm 50 verse 15. Call upon me the day of trouble. She goes to Jesus, and I will deliver you, which she did, or what he did for her. And then finally, you and you shall glorify me. By coming forward in fear and trembling, she gives glory to God for all that God has done for her through Christ Jesus. And now the word, your faith has made you well, is the same word that we would say, you know, we have been saved. It's the word sozo. Sounds like an energy drink almost. Sozo, come lay your hand on my daughter and she'll be made well. Sozo, if I touch the hem of his garment, I will be made well. Sozo, daughter, your faith has made you well. Sozo, go in peace, have shalom, a right relationship with God. This woman, through the pain of the law and the pain of her situation, saw that what she needed most was to be saved, not just in body, but in soul. Death was working through her, slowly killing her. And it is Jesus who makes well and makes us whole again. Now, despair can make us hopeless, you know. We think to ourselves as we go around looking for things to plug the dike, as it were, different fingers. Maybe we try different things. Maybe we say, oh, we tried church and it didn't work. We've tried self-help. We've tried, you know, doing the crazy Navy SEAL diet and schedule. Probably none of you have tried that. But we try anything, try anything to stop the slow descent into death. We either do it consciously or subconsciously. You know, think about how many, you know, our phones are listening to us all the time, it seems like, and everything you talk about, it seems to pop up in some sort of ad selling something, and every now and then we can, you know, last time I talked about any kind of supplements, suddenly I have a million ads asking, telling me to buy this supplement. It'll fix your gut health, or whatever. But that's what we do. We want to add, even if we are Christians, supplements. We'll begin to stack up the supplements, hoping that with a little Christ, with some supplements, all will be made well. But if we are trusting in more than one thing than Christ, we are not doing well. It's the touch of faith. J.C. Ryle says, one touch of real faith can do more for the soul than a hundred self-imposed austerities. It is not what we do, but what he does for us. We simply lay out the open hand of faith and he will fill it with himself. We need faith in Jesus Christ. And think about it, that crowd is pressing in on him, and who knows why they were trying to press in on him, but it was only one in the crowd who reached out in faith. And it was her faith that made her well and that saved her. where she can really go in peace. Beloved, you must reach out to Jesus Christ for the first time, for the thousandth time. Reach out to him in faith and go from here, go from your study closet, wherever you spent your time with the Lord and go in peace. It's the only way, the only thing to fix the dam as it's leaking. See your true need, your need of Jesus and then come to him. Approach him in humility reach out for him in distress, and finally cling to him in the face of death. So as this is all happening, you know, you can imagine the father getting increasingly more anxious as more time is going by, time the great enemy, time ever bringing us closer to death, and his worst fears come true. Verse 35, it says, while he was still speaking, there came from the ruler's house some who said, your daughter is dead. Why trouble the teacher any further? You can imagine his heart stopping as he hears those words, the words he feared most ringing in his ears. But Jesus overhears this. In fact, he ignores it altogether, really. And he says, do not fear, only believe. Do not fear, only believe. In the face of death, do not fear, only believe. Believe. Jesus is calling this man, he's calling us through this text to believe against the odds. Believe beyond the horizons of this life and this world. Now that does not mean that when we are near close to death that necessarily simply believing will stop it, but it's a call for radical faith, faith in the face of death. Spurgeon explains it for us here. He says, here is the very sphere of faith. Where there is no waiting, there must be swimming. And where there is no hope in the creature, then we must throw ourselves upon the creator. Hearing those terrible words in his ears made room for this man's faith to really begin to bloom. So it is. And so Jesus goes, he takes Peter, James, and John, and he goes into the house where there's a commotion, people weeping and wailing. And now you shouldn't think that these people really necessarily, maybe they're sad, but they're paid. It is very normal in their society when someone died, even if you were near broke, to hire professional mourners. That's a little strange. Someone dies in your house to say, get the mourners, we need four people on the flute, we need five wailing women, and maybe a man to cry out in great agony, bring him in, we'll pay him. But that's what they were doing. And that's why they can transition when Jesus comes in from doing their job to laughing at him. So that's the commotion Jesus walks into. So Jesus, when he entered, he said to them, why are you making a commotion and weeping? The child is not dead, but sleeping. Now, this child was dead. These people knew death when they saw it. In Luke's account of the same miracle, it says that when Jesus healed her, the spirit returned to the body. She was dead dead, and these people knew death, and that's why they laughed at him. It's like, you dummy. Of course she's dead. She's not sleeping. So what's Jesus doing? Jesus is redefining death. He's redefining death before he conquers it once and for all. So for we who love him, who have been saved by his blood, who have been healed by his wounds, death for us really is temporary. It is a, we are dead, but it is really a form of sleeping. Sleeping in the sense that you lay down and that you will again rise up. This girl is not dead, Jesus says, but sleeping. Just in that short little phrase, a view for us who know the scriptures of the future person and work of Jesus Christ, what he will do on the cross, as being buried and then rising again, being ascended into heaven in glory, praying for us, interceding for us, leading us, continuing to speak through the Spirit, all of these things, indicated as a signpost in, she is not dead, she is sleeping. When you die, will you see your death as just sleeping? You don't want to be churlish on your deathbed. But in one sense, when we say goodbye to those we love who are in Christ, we say, I'll see you again. This is not the end. It's not the end. So Jesus goes in. He puts them all outside, which is what they deserve for laughing at him. takes the family, takes his disciples, goes up, puts his hand on her, says, Talitha Kumi, which means, little girl, I say to you, arise, in Aramaic. And by the word of Jesus, this girl shoots up in bed, gets up, begins walking. the mere word of Jesus. Yes, he touches her, but it was not that touch that brought her to life, it was the word, the command that sent the galaxy spiraling into existence. All creation being held, upheld by the power of his right hand, and that word, little girl, I say to you, arrives. Jesus tells us in John 5, 25, truly, truly, I say to you, an hour is coming and is now here when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God and those who hear will live. We see that in pledge here. We see the end of all things, the great resurrection of the dead, the just and the unjust in pledge when he says, I say to you, little girl, I say to you, arise. Some have quipped that if Jesus did not specify to this little girl or to Lazarus when he raised him that the whole, all the dead in the world would have risen if he did not say so. I think that's a bit of a, it's a quip, but the power of the word of Christ. It's amazing, and so the parents are completely amazed. He has reversed, he has conquered death, with a word and he will conquer sin, death, and finality with his death on the cross. As we cling to death, sorry, cling to Christ in the face of death. You cannot face death without clinging to him. It is to him you must go when you are alive and well. It is to him you must go in your very last moments. Said it once to you and I'll say it again. If I have the privilege, privileged to be at your bedside as you are passing. I'm going to ask you a question. That question is this, is Christ precious to you? Who are you clinging to? Is Christ precious to you? And I pray with all of my heart that you will be able to say, yes, he is my savior. I'm ready. And we don't have to, you know, you never know what you're going to say when you get there. but nothing much more will have to be said as long as that is true. Is Christ precious to you? Are you clinging to him? David says in Psalm 63, eight, he says, he says, my soul clings to you and your right hand upholds me. We cling and he bears us up. It's beautiful. The flesh, beloved, the worldly thinking will limit our view. We'll only be able to see what's right in front of us and nothing beyond it. The world is terrified to die. But on whose terms will you face death? The world's or Christ's? The love of Christ for us will cast out all fear because he is death's conqueror. So as we finish, we see our true need. We see that we need Christ more than anything else. We approach in humility, we reach out for him in distress, we cling to him in the face of death. Our greatest need is Christ and our greatest means by which we obtain Christ is faith. As we close, hear the words of J.C. Ryle. He says, by faith we begin, by faith we live, by faith we stand, we walk by faith and not by sight, by faith we overcome, by faith we have peace, by faith we enter rest. Do you believe in Jesus Christ? Even a little bit. If you do, he will save you to the uttermost. A little mustard seed of faith. is enough to move the mountains off the top of you and raise you from the dead and be in His presence forever. But only in Christ, there is no hope outside of Him. Make Him your Savior if He is not already this morning. Amen, let's pray. Heavenly Father, we pray for your tender mercies, that we would feel them, not just know them and see them in text, but to feel them by the power of your spirit. Lord, we need you, oh, how we need you. Every hour we need you, the song says. Lord, let us come to you, bid us welcome, and lay our burdens down, and trust in you and you alone. We ask all these things in Jesus' name, amen.