Broken
Mark 5:21-43
This week duke university’s Zion Williamson was playing a basketball game when his Nike shoe literally came apart on the court. Because his shoe broke and injured Zion it also injured Nike causing their stock to plummet over a billion dollars. Now that’s what happens when a shoe breaks but that is nothing compared to the fallout of a broken world in which people endure suffering every day. Zion can get a new pair of shoes, Nike will recover its stock but how do you fix a broken world? The answer one person at a time and the only one who can do that is Jesus. today we are looking at two who were broken in different ways one a broken heart the other a broken body both meeting the compassion of a savior.
Consider that we have two people desperate for help with no where else to turn, where the circumstances of their lives have placed them in a situation beyond their control. In walks Jesus. the one they have heard about.
Jairus was a ruler of the synagogue. That is, he was one who ran the services and organized the reading of the Torah the scripture. His only daughter is dying. He hears that Jesus has arrived and runs to meet him and implores him, begs him to come lay hands on his daughter that she would be healed. On the way to his house he gets word that his daughter has died, a parent’s worst nightmare.
Don’t fear, have faith-Jesus was about to do something they had never seen before. The kingdom of God does not operate like the kingdoms of this world. He broke the natural order and raised Jairus daughter from the dead. When we have faith in Jesus, we are trusting in the one who holds all creation together.
Application-there are situations where we are tempted to lose hope, to fear. We pray but we don’t see a way out. This is where we need to trust in the one who can do things we have never seen before, who operates in a way that might not make sense to us at the time. There are some good things to take into account when feeling overwhelmed
God is present in our pain– Jesus was right there looking him in the eye when news of his daughter’s death had reached him. eyes that have looked into eternity that know far more than we could’ve ever imagined. God knows what we go through here. And can be our comfort in the most difficult times
He brings us through our trials– He forges us as a weapon in the fires of adversity for his purposes – a sword, when it is being made, is beaten down and hardened as it is thrust into the fire and then cooled in the water. Life’s difficulties can break us but they don’t have to if we trust in God he can use those same difficulties that have the potential to turn us into bitter angry people and instead make us into godly men and women who spread his truth.
He will not abandon us. – those in this world may betray you or abandon you but Christ never will
He has broken the power of death- death no longer holds any fear for the believer. We know that this is not the end that we will all see one another again. Parents siblings’ sons and daughters. yesterday we scattered the ashes of a good friend and remembered him. But because of what Jesus has done we know we will see him again.
The Second story we have is of the women who had an issue of blood. What do we know about her? She had become broke through spending all here money on doctors. Because of her medical condition, she was considered constantly ceremonially unclean and could not according to Jewish law enter the temple. Not only that bearing children was a thing of pride in this culture that celebrated life So not only was she dealing with a chronic medical problem that probably left her anemic but she had to deal with the shame of being an outcast in that society-
while the culture may differ from ours we can relate to the reality of both physical pains and also dealing with the emotional pain of shame that comes from either something we did or in the past or something that might have bee done to us. It may not be our fault but never the less the pain is real. So, what does this woman do? The crowd is pressing in on Jesus and she says if I could just touch him I will be healed. And she was. What can we learn from this woman?
Jesus is a healing God– notice he said your faith has healed you. – a Word about healing- having been mostly from a Pentecostal/charismatic background I have been witness to multiple miraculous healings that have been medically verified. I have also prayed for people and not seen healing. It would be wonderful of this healing was on tap so to say. We try so hard to put these things into formula’s But faith isn’t a formula where you can snap your fingers and make something happen. Faith is trust in who God is as well as what he can do.
Jesus breaks the power of shame-shame can be a powerful thing. It stops you from trying, from stepping out for fear of failure, shame stops of from trying to come to God
- when we know that we have not been living a way that pleases him we begin to think in oh I shouldn’t show up at church I would just be a hypocrite But church is exactly where you want to be. The Church is a recovery program for hypocrisy. Just like the addict admits their need for help by walking into an AA meeting the hypocrite admits their need for a righteous God to invade their life by coming into the church.
- But then there are those things that we are ashamed of that we had no control over, abuse at the hands of another maybe even someone you might have trusted. These things sit with us throughout our lives and can affect how we live, who we trust or don’t trust
Neither our past nor our feelings define us– when we come to Christ we are no longer defined by our past decisions.
- Although the devil likes to remind us of our past and what we did and how we acted and condemn us. God wants us to look to the future. To see ourselves as he sees us. Consider the book of revelation and the great multitude from every nation dressed in white standing before the throne of God. that is how God sees you. We must reject the lie in our modern culture that feelings are the truth. Our hearts can deceive us when they are informed but lies of the devil. These lies are allowed to sink in and affect how we live. But feelings aren’t facts.
We are a new creation. But when we come to Jesus there is a change that happens within us. We are born again we become something new, someone new, the old has gone, the new has come. This being born again is a spiritual birth that opens up a whole new life of possibilities.