The story of “A Dead Girl and a Sick Woman” in the bible is a very interesting story. It can teach people from all positions. A ruler and an outcast both come to Jesus pledging with Jesus to help them. In that time, rulers of the world where respected, from parents to priest then kings. The lower fear the higher in position. Unlike in our world today, where the lower mocks the highs and makes them look like fools on TV media and the internet. In that time, Kings where prideful people. Anyone with authority to rule over a people were at times prideful, but this rulers wasn’t prideful. Let’s look at the woman for a moment. See had some bleeding going on for a long time. Most likely she went to many doctors, but none could help her, that is why she went to Jesus this day when he was passing by. See when I Jewish woman is having her period, she was seen as unclean in those times, she wasn’t able to enter into the Jewish church, it was forbidden. Image being forbidden to do something that you’re who life is wrap around. For me personally, I couldn’t image a life without reading the bible, praying and worshipping. For this woman, her life was all wrap around the Jewish church and that bleeding keep her from that Jewish church. She needed a 2nd chance and the rulers came pledging for help.
Jesus was just preaching a sermon when a ruler comes crying for him to bring his daughter back to life. “My daughter is even now dead: but come and lay thy hand upon her, and she shall live.” Matthew 9:18.
I heard a Pastor of mine say once, “Jesus served others mostly with interruptions in his ministry on earth.” See how this guy interrupts Jesus as he is preaching. For us to be more like Jesus as servants of God, to the world, we have to be willing to be interrupted by others people, to meet their needs above our own. The Day my Pastor preached that, I was driving home, I decided before hand to just keep driving straight and not go through Walmart parking lot, since it takes more time, but right at the last minute, I change my mind, went through the parking lot. At the end of the parking lot, next to doors, a men came to my truck and asked me to drive me like 2 or 3 miles to another Walmart. I look and saw I had no gas, I had no more money for gas, I was hungry and tried. I told him to get it and I’ll take him any ways. See you want to make a change in people’s lives, you don’t have to go create a ministry and do all this stuff to try to help people. God can use you where you are today. Likewise, my family thinks I’m crazy, because I moved out my mom’s house few months ago, ever since I’ve been inviting homeless people to live with me. I help them get settle back on their feet and then let them go and try life again. Some of us are wondering, “When is God going to use me?” It’s sad, God been trying to use you, he is asking you, “When will you be willing?” others times though feel bad about, a co-worker asked me for help and I blew them off because I had my own notes to get done. I put myself before them, Jesus calls us to put others before ourselves.
There not much to look at when you see the ruler right? All we see is a guy crying because his daughter died. What men wouldn’t be crying? But there is more to the story, then the eye can see. See this ruler did something unexpected. He lowered himself below Jesus. Why is that important though? See in that age, Jesus wasn’t no leader like we see him today. He was a homeless guy reaching the “Kingdom of God is near”. Most leaders would look at him and call him crazy and a threat to their own kingdom. Your preaching a kingdom that no one knows about, your bringing a new way of living and new teaching into the picture to people who all they knew was what was teaches to them by the priest. Jesus was a threat to the rulers of this time, but not to this ruler, to this ruler Jesus was his last and only hope, for his daughter to come out of death back to life.
When Jesus got to the house of the ruler, everyone seems to be having a funeral for the little girl. Jesus states that the little girl is not dead but sleeping. People laugh at Jesus. Can you think of a time when someone laugh at God, when God told some people about having a miracle happen when it was impossible? I can, read back in Genesis, Abram and his wife laugh when God told them that they would have a son, when they were already 99 years old. See, it might seem foolish or funny, but God makes promises that you wouldn’t expected. He says things that you wouldn’t think he would say. See the problem was Faith, when we were, are and will be (yesterday, today and tomorrow) faithless, God was faithful and is and always will be. God keeps his word always. The problem was faith with Abram and his wife in Genesis and it was faith with the people at this funeral. When there is no faith, people laugh at ideas that seem crazy, like having a baby boy at age 99, but it happened or Jesus bringing a little girl back to life, that happen to. It takes Faith. See, the ruler went to Jesus, hoping for him to help. He had faith in Jesus to bring his daughter back to life, but no one else did. See sometimes, it’s the one that is a little different looking that actually knows what is doing with what he got. This ruler knew if he went to Jesus and asked for him to just lay his hand on his daughter. All it took was faith.
Along with faith, it took a humble heart. This ruler could of went and commanded Jesus to come and heal his daughter, but he didn’t, he asked Jesus to come and heal his daughter. To ask someone something like that, you putting yourself below them knowing that you are unable, even with all your power and wealth in your hands, you humble yourself under this homeless guy you don’t really know, except from what people have said. It took a lot of humbleness and faith for this ruler to do that.
We can take a fast look at this woman, she was bleeding for 12 years. It was by her faith, that she touch Jesus’s clothing. She knew, something is different about this men, he isn’t like the other rulers. She put his faith in his power, look at what Jesus says to her, “Your faith has healed you”. Why though, why didn’t he say, “I healed you.” See everyone has faith, but where you put that faith is where your trust and hope is. Her trust and hope was in Jesus’s power to heal her and because of that, her faith in Jesus heal her.
The main message is Faith. Are you willing to have your faith in Jesus? To trust him and hope in him? Your life might be a mess right now. Your world is just falling apart, I don’t know what exactly what you’re going through, but Jesus is waiting for your voice and your hand to reach out to him. He is willing to restore your life. Your choice.
Sunday I was in my car, praying and crying out to God. I lay down everything before him. Small things and big things. That whole week, God came to my rescue. Right when I ran out of money, I needed food, God provided me a week worth of food. Every time I ran out of gas for my truck, God made a way. I saw a few times, my truck was on “E” for almost 3 hours, When it broke down on the street, because I needed gas, I had to push the truck to the side and 2 big old guys stopped and told me to get back in the truck and steer and their push my truck to a safe spot off the street. Praise God, day before that happens, my roommate pay me his rent, so I was actually able to buy gas that day, I used a gas can I had bought for a landscape company that never took off. Over and over again the whole week, God’s faithfulness has been with me. I’m again in a trail today.
My main point I’m trying to get across to you is God is for us, not against us. Cry out to him, he will answer you.
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