It is never too late for Jesus to help those in need. From his exposition of Luke’s gospel, today R.C. Sproul shows how Christ restored the hope of a man about to lose his daughter and of a woman who had lost everything she had. Get R.C. Sproul’s commentary on the gospel of Luke for your donation of any amount: https://gift.renewingyourmind.org/3600/luke-commentary Meet Today’s Teacher: R.C. Sproul (1939–2017) was known for his ability to winsomely and clearly communicate deep, practical truths from God’s Word. He was founder of Ligonier Ministries, first minister of preaching and teaching at Saint Andrew’s Chapel, first president of Reformation Bible College, and executive editor of Tabletalk magazine. Meet the Host: Nathan W. Bingham is vice president of ministry engagement for Ligonier Ministries, executive producer and host of Renewing Your Mind, host of the Ask Ligonier podcast, and a graduate of Presbyterian Theological College in Melbourne, Australia. Nathan joined Ligonier in 2012 and lives in Central Florida with his wife and four children. Renewing Your Mind is a donor-supported outreach of Ligonier Ministries. Explore all of our podcasts: https://www.ligonier.org/podcasts
Well, Jairus had one child, an only daughter who was about 12 years of age, and she was dying. And his only hope at that point was Jesus.
We always need Jesus, but sometimes the Lord uses suffering and trials in our life to remind us of our dependence upon Him for all things. Have you experienced that in a season of suffering? Welcome to the Sunday edition of Renewing Your Mind. I'm your host, Nathan W. Bingham.
As we read the accounts of Jesus' earthly ministry and the miracles and healings He performed, we learn things about Him and His character, and we're reminded of our need, not merely for physical healing, but for the salvation of our souls.
The two moments that we'll hear about today are the final accounts that we'll look at in Luke's Gospel, which means today is the final time that you can request R.C. Sproul's commentary on Luke with a donation of any amount at renewingyourmind.org. Respond before this offer ends at midnight, as it won't be repeated next Sunday.
Here's Dr. Sproul on Jairus' daughter and the woman with the issue of blood.
When last we looked at the text after Jesus healed Legion, we see that the people came out to witness what had happened and when they realized what had taken place, they were filled with fear, even as the disciples had been filled with fear when Jesus calmed the storm on the Sea of Galilee. And they implored, they begged Jesus to leave.
And so in this last narrative, we had people saying to Jesus, please go. And in the very next passage, we hear the begging of the ruler of the synagogue saying to Jesus, please come. But of course, it was on the other side of the Sea of Galilee when the people After Legion was healed, begged Jesus to leave, he departed from them and crossed again to the shore by Capernaum.
And it's on that side that we pick up the narrative in verse 40 that now the multitude on that side of the lake welcomed him. Note the irony. The multitude on the other side of the lake wanted him gone. Now the people who were more familiar with him near Capernaum were happy to see him returning, for they were waiting for him.
And behold, there came a man named Jairus, who was identified by Luke as a ruler of the synagogue. The synagogue in those days was ruled by elders, and those who had that position were given great esteem and authority in the Jewish community. And so this is a man of some status, and when he comes to Jesus, he humbles himself completely and falls at the feet of Jesus.
He's a desperate man, and Luke tells us the reason for his desperation. Luke tells us that he had one child, an only daughter who was about 12 years of age. and she was dying. It's obvious that this ruler would have summoned the best physicians in and around Capernaum to treat his daughter, but whatever treatments she received were not successful, and his only hope at that point was Jesus.
Jesus was the only one who could fill the need that he has. Let me pause at this point for a little scurry down a rabbit trail. I don't know how many people I've had say to me that they didn't need Jesus. That's a common sense of people outside the kingdom of God. Oh, there are times of crisis that visit them during the course of their lives where suddenly they may turn to Jesus seeking help.
But for the most part, fallen and lost mankind feels no need for Jesus, which is one of the most tragic misunderstandings of the human predicament that we find anywhere, because there is nothing in this world that every person in it needs more, more desperately, then they need Jesus. Well, Jairus at least understood his need, and so he came humbly to Jesus and begged Him, saying, please come.
And so Jesus went. But as he went, obviously, the crowd that had welcomed him on the shore of the sea got wind of what was going on. They witnessed the beseeching of Jairus. They heard his lament. They heard him beg Jesus to come and save his daughter. And so the whispering goes among the crowd, and they all fall in step with Jesus. And you hear the murmuring say, this I have to see.
And they had already probably been eyewitnesses of other miracles that Jesus had performed, but this was something that they had never seen, a raising from the dead or the healing, I should say, of somebody at least on the point of death. And so the multitudes thronged him.
And now the narrative of the raising of Jairus' daughter is interrupted just as Jesus is interrupted on his way to Jairus' house where we read this event taking place. Now a woman having a flow of blood for 12 years who had spent all her livelihood on physicians and could not be healed by any. This woman is given no name. just her condition and her situation.
Here's a woman who, presumably the same year that Jairus' daughter was born, she came down with a chronic case of hemorrhaging, wherein she lost her health, first of all. And Luke tells us that she spent every penny that she had going to doctors trying to find Jairus. a cure for this chronic hemorrhaging.
And so we see a woman who's lost her health, who's lost her wealth, but not only that, since she had this hemorrhaging, she would have been made ceremonially unclean and therefore would have lost her status and her reputation in the Jewish community.
So everything that was important to her, her health, her money, her status in the community were gone, not for a month or 12 months, but for 12 years. And she was as desperate in her condition as Jairus was in his having a daughter who was dying. And we see what this woman did with her need.
As Jairus had come and fell down before Jesus, now this woman reasoned in her heart in this manner, if I can just touch His garment, I don't need to have Him give me an audience. I don't need to have Him lay His hands on me. I don't need to have Him say anything to me. He doesn't need to touch me. Besides, I'm unclean. And it would be presumptuous of me to ask Him to touch me.
But if I can just get close enough to touch one of the tassels on the edge of His garment, I'm sure that's all it will take. Now, here's a woman who had no reason at all to trust any man that she had ever met to heal her. Again, she'd spent every penny that she had with professional healers who were stymied by her condition and unable to help her at all. And yet, she sees Jesus.
And when she sees Jesus, she said, I don't need to go to any more doctors. I just want to touch the hem of His garment, and I'll be healed. And so she came from behind him and touched the border of his garment. And instantly the flow of blood stopped. The hemorrhaging finished. And Jesus stopped. And he looked around and he said, who touched me? Now this poor woman is now cowering in terror.
The last thing she wants to do is to come forward and say, I did it. But in the meantime, Jesus wants to know who touched him, and everybody denied it. All the people crowding against Jesus say, I didn't do it, not me. And Peter, now impetuous Peter, prone to correcting Jesus when Jesus needed to be corrected,
They said, Master, the multitudes throng and press against you, and you say, Who touched me? Do you hear the tone in Peter's voice? Are you out of your mind? How in the world are we going to know who touched you? There's all these people bumping and pushing against you every second, and you want to know. You're asking us, Who touched you? Jesus politely said,
ignored the outburst from Peter, and simply said, look, somebody touched me. I know it because I perceived power going out for me. Now, this statement that Jesus makes in this particular circumstance can tell us something about him. that when Jesus used His power to redeem people from whatever condition they were in, it cost Him something. When He calmed the storm, it cost Him something.
When He healed the man of a legion of demons, He was drained from the power that left Him. And now as he's on his way to deal with the dying daughter of Jairus, he feels the power go out of him again. And he understood that that exit of strength from his body did not occur willy-nilly, that it only occurred when redeeming power was being used in a saving way. He said, Peter, somebody touched me.
I know that somebody touched me because I felt, not the touch, but I felt the departure of my power. And now when the woman saw that she was not hidden, she came trembling and falling down before Him. This is the second person that has fallen down before Jesus in this narrative. First Jairus and now the woman. She declared to Him in the presence of all the people,
that she touched him, and in the presence of all the people, she said why she touched him. Master, I've had this flow of blood unceasing for 12 years, and nobody can help me. And I thought that if I could just touch the hem of your garment, I didn't want to interrupt you. I didn't want it to cost you anything. I didn't want you to have power leave you.
I just wanted to touch the hem of your garment, that's all. And when I did it, I was healed immediately, instantly, totally, and completely. And he said to her daughter, you know, I wonder how old she was. She'd had this condition for 12 years. She wasn't a child, obviously. She may have been just as old as Jesus. And yet Jesus called her daughter. Don't miss the significance of that.
We are not by nature sons and daughters of God. God is not the father of us all. In biblical terms, God is only the father of His only begotten Son, and all the rest of His children, sons and daughters, are adopted. There's no other way to get into the family of God except through adoption. And the only way you can be adopted in the family of God is through God's only Son.
And so this woman who's trembling, telling the story, wondering what Jesus is going to do, the first thing He does is welcomes her into God's family by calling your daughter. Be of good cheer. Stop trembling. Stop being afraid. now my daughter." He's on his way to heal Jairus' daughter, and instead he stops to heal what is now his own daughter. Your faith has made you well. Go in peace.
It wasn't her faith that was the power to heal her, as some mistakenly believe. But because of her faith, as a consequence of her faith, because she trusted in Christ, she was healed. And so Jesus said, go in peace. How many times does our Lord say this to people? Is this not His favorite litany for His people? Peace I leave with you. My peace I give unto you, not as the world gives I unto you.
Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden. I will give you rest. And that's not all he gives. He gives peace. And he says to this woman, your body's fine. Your soul's even better. So go now in peace. And while he was still speaking, again, he's interrupted. For someone came from the ruler of the synagogue's house and with bad news for Jairus. Jairus, I'm sorry. Your daughter's dead.
Jairus, don't bother the master anymore. It's too late. Remember in John's gospel when Jesus got to the home of Mary and Martha and Lazarus, four days after Lazarus died and the women are wringing their hands and saying, if only you would have been here, Lord, he wouldn't have died. And now you come four days later, it's too late.
Do you know how many millions of people have assumed in their lifetime that it was too late for them to meet Jesus or to have Jesus do anything for them? And I've been a pagan all these years and too late for me. Are you still alive? Then it's not too late. When Jesus heard this, he said to him, do not be afraid. Only believe, and she will be made well. You didn't hear us, Jesus. It's too late.
He may be able to give sight to the blind and hearing to the deaf and fix people with legs that won't work, but now it's too late. She's dead. Jesus said, everything's going to be made well. And so when he came into the house, he permitted no one to go in except Peter, James, and John and the father and mother of the girl. They all wept and mourned for her. But he said, do not weep.
Stop your crying. She's not dead, but sleeping. What do we make of this? Did Jesus just cure a young girl that had become comatose? He just simply went in and woke her up?
Is Jesus teaching us here the heretical doctrine of psychopinicchia, that when we die, we don't really die, we just fall into a slumber where we go into what is called soul sleep and remain in a condition of suspended animation until the final judgment when we are awakened on the last day, and it seems as though no time has passed, we weren't really dead, we were just asleep? No.
This is a common way of Jewish speaking that speaks euphemistically. And now Jesus is saying, she's not dead in the sense of dead once and for all, gone forever, but I just need to wake her up. Now, notice this, that when he said this, they ridiculed him, knowing that she was dead. Now, what's the antecedent of they? Who was it? that ridiculed Jesus when He said this? Peter, James, and John?
The mother and the father? No. The ones that ridiculed Him were that crowd that was pressing around outside, wailing and playing the music. Who were they? They were the professional mourners that gathered like buzzards as soon as the deaths occurred. These professional mourners were paid to play the flute and to wail and to scream at funerals, and they were paid to do this.
And so when a person who had a death in the family who was somebody of means, as soon as the news came, they would flock to have the funeral immediately. So you have these professional mourners out there And Jesus says, hey, be quiet. Stopped the screaming, silenced the flute, no flute, and said, she's sleeping. And they ridiculed him. They weren't mourning now, they were mocking.
And they were mocking Jesus. And they mocked why? because they knew she was dead. I don't know if you saw the movie Princess Bride, Billy Crystal was the miracle worker, and Dread Pirate Robert was sick unto death. He was 99% dead. Nobody could fix him. And so his friends took him to see the miracle worker, Billy Crystal, because they said he could do anything.
Billy Crystal looked at Dread Pirate Robert and he said, he's not dead. He's mostly dead. He said, dead I can't fix. Mostly dead I can fix. And he fixed him. Well, these people say that the little girl wasn't mostly dead. She was all the way dead. This was not a resuscitation. This was a resurrection. but He put them all outside, took her by the hand and called.
There it is again, the divine effectual call. The means by which the world, the universe came into being was by divine imperative, divine fiat. God called the universe into being, let there be light. And there was light. Lazarus came out of that tomb because Jesus called him out of the tomb.
If you are in Christ this morning, if you are a Christian, it's because God the Holy Spirit called you out of darkness into light, and He just didn't invite you. That call was not simply the outer call of preaching. It was the inner call of God the Holy Ghost, the omnipotent God who brought you into the alive from spiritual death, what we call in theology the effectual call of God.
How did Jesus calm the sea? He called the waves and the wind to stop, and they stopped. And so now He called this inert 12-year-old daughter saying, little girl, arise. This is a foretaste of the last judgment. When all who are in Christ will hear the same effectual call, and the dead in Christ will rise at the sound of his voice when he says, my little ones, little boy, little girl, get up.
And we will rise on that day. And then her spirit returned. Again, Luke understood that she was not comatose because when you're comatose, your soul doesn't leave the body. If you're in soul sleep, your soul doesn't leave the body. But this little girl was dead because her soul had gone. And Jesus called it back. He said, come back here. And reunited her soul with her body.
And she arose immediately. He commanded that she should be given something to eat. Feed this little girl, will you? She's been so sick, she's got to be hungry. So let's get about the daily business of taking care of our kids. Will you parents please fix her something to eat? She's fine. And their parents were astonished. but he charged them to tell no one what had happened. Not yet.
Don't tell anybody yet. That moment will come when he will charge them and all who received the grace of Christ to tell everybody. What an incredible day in the life of Jesus.
That was R.C. Sproul on this Sunday edition of Renewing Your Mind. Thanks for being with us. If you listen to Renewing Your Mind often, would you please consider sharing a link to today's episode online and encouraging your family and friends to subscribe to the podcast.
This really does help spread the reach of Renewing Your Mind, and you can find links in your favorite podcast app or at renewingyourmind.org. Today's sermon was the final sermon from this short series in Luke's Gospel, but you can study Luke in greater detail when you request R.C. Sproul's expositional commentary with a donation of any amount at renewingyourmind.org.
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