Authority Over Death
Audio Version
Listen to the sermon
Summary
Transcript
· When Jesus touches the unclean, Jesus doesn't become unclean. Instead, the unclean becomes clean. You following that? When he touches the dead, all of a sudden, Jesus doesn't become dead.
· Instead, the dead becomes alive. When Jesus does something, power only passes one way from Jesus. Our sin, our grossness, our brokenness, the ways we have failed, when we come to Jesus, we cannot give our darkness to him. The only thing he can do is give his grace, his love, and his resurrection to us.
· But hey, we are so excited that you're here. As we said, we're continuing on in our series uh through miracles. And if you have a Bible, go ahead and grab it and go to Matthew chapter 9. We're going to be starting in verse 18. And here's what I want to encourage you to do as you flip there is grab your Bible, open it up to Matthew or you can grab Bible on your phone, but then also grab the notes either that you walked in with or you can scan the QR code in front of you or behind me. We want you to take notes and not fall asleep. All right? Not on my jokes, but on the word of God and what it's going to call us to do.
· And here's what's been so exciting about this series as we've gone through the miracles of Christ is we have asked this question over and over again is what kind of man is this? They ask it in Matthew chapter 8 27 is is who is this Jesus guy? And as we've gone, we've seen that he is the Jesus who has authority over nature. How he is the God, the Jesus who has authority over demons.
· Last week, we saw how he has authority over sin and he could tell a lame man to get up and walk. He says, "Your sins are forgiven now. Get up and walk." How crazy is that? This guy's been paralyzed his whole life. And Jesus is like, "Walk." He's like, "That's why I'm here.
· I can't walk." He's like, "No, do it."
· and he does it. Well, today as Jesus continues to confront stuff, confront the storms, to confront the demons and the dark forces, to confront our sin.
· Today, we see something that Jesus confronts that means something for all of us is he confronts death itself. You see, death is one of those obstacles that no matter who we are, all of us will have to face death. And here's the crazy thing about death is death has an undefeated record when it comes to humans and regular people. Is every time we come up against death, death wins and we lose. And death is one of those inevitable things that all of us will face at some point and has already impacted you in some way.
· Maybe if you have been to that funeral of a grandparent or family member and was expected and that sickness kept dra dragging on and and you knew it was coming, but when that funeral comes, it doesn't make it any easier. Or maybe you've been to those funerals of an unexpected spouse that has passed and that pain just hits you and you don't know how to move forward. Maybe you are still grieving the loss of a child, something that should never happen but in this broken world does.
· Well, today as we enter this scene in Matthew chapter 9, we see how Jesus walks into this scenario where death has already made its mark, but how Jesus shows us who he is and how we respond to it. And here is our miraculous truth that we see revealed throughout this passage is how we respond to death reveals what we believe about life.
· You see, in this story, it's going to be filled with different responses of those who run to Christ, those who mock Christ, and those who show up and show what authority is that is greater in Christ. But for us, as we dive into this passage, when we will all face death, the question becomes, how do we face it? How do we respond to it? And what does that reveal about how we view this life and how we go day by day?
· As we dive into these three responses to death, the first thing that we are going to see throughout this passage that Matthew sets up for us, and I love this passage that we've seen throughout all these miracles is Matthew doesn't just tell this story, but Mark and Luke tell it as well. And they give us some more details as this unravels. But what we're going to see first, so the first response to death in this passage is the response of the desperate family.
· Matthew chapter 9 starting in verse 18.
· As we dive into the story, it says this.
· As he Jesus was telling him these things, suddenly one of the leaders came and knelt down before him, saying, "My daughter has just died.
· Death has made its mark." But he says, "But come and lay your hand on her and she will live." You see Matthew as we get into this story, he simply starts it and he says this that one of the leaders came out. Mark and Luke fill in the details a little bit more and fill in this picture is this leader's name was Jarius and he was actually a ruler of the synagogue in Capernaum. And then this is important is Capernaum was Jesus' home base which we already see him perform a miracle of raising the paralytic and bringing him up.
· But here we also see a little more context to this is why it was so important is this leader of the synagogue was a big deal that as a synagogue ruler is one of the most respected positions in a Jewish community. He ran the worship services.
· He decided who taught. He sat in the front row. You probably wish you could do all that but sitting in the front row, right? You wish you could come to church and decide who teaches. You're like, I don't know if I want that guy today. Can you put like like, you know, have a little roulette just throw people in. He he carried the keys to the building. I have keys to the church as you'd probably imagine and thankfully other people do too because when you have keys to a church, if you're the last one with keys that is there, that means you have to make sure it's all locked up before you go. Um that's why I try to leave before the other people with keys can leave so I don't have to lock up and see it all.
· But this was a big deal for all of him is Jarius had respect in the community. Jarius was somebody in the religious world of Capernaum. He was put on a pedestal. He had the title. He had the standing. He had the house. He had the career. By every external measure, his life was working. He was successful.
· And then his 12-year-old daughter got sick.
· And when she got sick, she ended up dying. And all of a sudden, this guy who looked like he had it all together, his life just unraveled in a moment.
· As I was reading this past couple weeks, past month, and preparing for this passage, as a dad of four, this one kind of cut deep because there are times when your kids are sick and you just feel absolutely helpless. It's I remember being when having babies and little children in the house and when they're coughing, you have like no idea. They're like, "Are they going to die? Are they well? Do I take them to the hospital now?" Like, you just feel so helpless cuz you can't do anything. I want to just like bubble wrap our kids when they were little, but then the more kids you have, the more you actually just want to expose them to danger. I'm like, take off the bubble wrap.
· Go hurt yourself, right? Uh go fall, feel like you need to learn risk and like don't break your arm cuz that'll cost me money, but do everything short of a hospital visit.
· So, you learn your lessons. Just yesterday, my my daughter, we're out playing outside cuz it's getting hot and she's on a giant inflatable bounce house, and she just screams bloody murder. And this is my my oldest daughter, my nine-year-old Ari. And I'm like, we're like go over like what's I was like, man, one of her brothers kicked her in the face again. Like, what's happening? And I go over there and she's like, I got stung by a bee.
· Now, I don't know if there there wasn't any beasting, so she might have been kind of But she got stung by something.
· And literally, I thought she was going to die based on her reaction. And the reaction continued through the whole night. She all of a sudden she couldn't eat dinner cuz she just felt too. All of a sudden, her entire body hurt. I'm like, what hurts? Everything. I'm like, how does it hurt? it just all hurts and is in pain. And she literally in her bed as I'm wrapping up after I gave her benadryil, which is an antihistamine in case she's allergic, but also makes her go to sleep.
· As she's laying in her bed, she asked me, "Am I going to die?" I'm like, "Oh, you said I had to hold it together cuz inside I did not say, "Ah, all right." But I was like, "No, honey. You're going to be all right." She did wake up fine by this way this morning. All right. So, the be was okay. But in those moments as a dad, as a mom, when your kids get hurt, when your kids get sick, when your kids do things that are outside of your power, you feel so helpless.
· And we see this story that this leader of Jarius, and here's what I think we need to see in here. Nothing in his title could save her. Nothing in his position could bring his little 12-year-old daughter back from the edge.
· The prayers he had prayed in the synagogue were not answered how he wanted them to be. The offerings he had overseen did not change anything. The respect that he had earned could not turn the tide. None of it mattered when his little girl stopped breathing.
· So this man, this ruler, this religious leader, this pillar of the community, he ran out of his house and he fell at the feet of a carpenter from Nazareth.
· Now, we get a little unfair advantage because we know Jesus is kind of this big deal. But in this time, Jesus just some wandering carpenter who's probably a year into his ministry that hear these rumblings. Some think he's a heretic.
· Some think he's a crazy person. The only thing they know is he's a carpenter by trade. And what's huge in this and we can't miss this in the grief of Jarius.
· In his desperation, the ruler of the synagogue knelt before Jesus. Matthew words uses the word for kneeling of meaning worship. He was worshiping a carpenter desperate for help.
· You look at what he says when he falls at the feet of Jesus. He says, "My daughter just died." But he says, "But come and lay your hands on her and she will live." I I love this because this is theology that is shaped by desperation. This is faith that is forged in fire. He didn't come with a formula. He didn't come with a bargain.
· Instead, he came with a corpse in the other room and a belief that Jesus could do something about it. And catch these two words. And if you are a highlighter, if you're an underliner in your Bible, I would underline or highlight these words. And he says, "But come." He says, "My daughter just died. I can't do anything about it. I tried to prevent it. I had the best doctors. I did everything I could, but she has died."
· But he says this, "But come."
· That sentence should end at my daughter has died, but come is the transition that opens this sentence again. Two of the most hopeful words in the gospel.
· Death had just won. Death had the last word. But this desperate dad says, "Jesus, come." Because he believed the word of Jesus was bigger than the word of death.
· You've walked in this morning and I don't know what you're carrying. Maybe you have grief. Maybe you have anxiety.
· Maybe you have a weight that is on you that you just can't feel. As much as you work, it doesn't seem to go away. As much as you keep striving, it doesn't seem like things are better. I love the thing as an adult, all we keep saying is, "I'm really busy in this season, but it's going to get better." And it doesn't slow down, and it doesn't get better. or it just keeps being busy. And maybe you've walked in and there is a wait on you. But maybe you need to pray a prayer like this to God today is but come God. I know all this is going on.
· But come, God, I know my finances are a wreck. But come, God, I know my kids are making bad decisions. But come, God, I know my job is unbearable. But come, God, I know my marriage is in shambles, but come, God, the world seems to be on fire and doesn't seem to be getting better, but God, come.
· And he tells this to Jesus, "But come."
· And look at how Jesus responds in verse 19. As he says, "But come," it says, "So Jesus and his disciples, they got up and they followed him."
· We can't rush past this.
· The synagogue ruler that came worshiping Jesus and Jesus followed him home.
· That's what happens when you bring your desperation to Jesus. He moves towards you. Desperation drives us to Jesus.
· Often, if we're not careful, pride pushes away. But here, this family chose desperation. As they come to Jesus, Jesus comes to them. This past week, I was listening to a story of a actor, former actor, I think, and he's now more of a podcaster and YouTuber and guy that just talks online that everyone thinks they can do, but you probably can't. But he he does stuff online. His name is Russell Brand, and he's like British or European.
· There is a little bit of a I don't know if that was an ah or like uh um but he he talks and he has a really heavy accent so I only understand like every fourth word he actually says. Um but he lived a crazy life and his acting and everything else but about 2 years ago he started reading the Bible and exploring a faith in Christ. And about a year and a half ago or so he committed his life to Christ and says he follows Jesus.
· And in this interview he did last year that I was listening to as he's talking about his faith, they asked him, they're like, "When did you come to Jesus? Tell us about that time you came to Jesus." And he kind of laughed for a second. He's like, "I came to Jesus after I came to everything else first."
· He came to everything else in life. He tried that. He tried this. And how often is that our story? where we come to all the things the world promises is we come to try to see if it will bring us satisfaction, if it will bring us uh purpose, if it will fill our hearts. We come to money and to influence and to power. We come to sex and to drugs and addictions and the list can go on and on and on and on. And we come to those things often before we come to Jesus.
· And in our desperation, we come to him.
· But the beauty is when we come to him, even in our desperation, he comes to us.
· And here's what's beautiful in this story is the story does not end there.
· And it's not the only response is we see this desperate family. But then we get a little hard turn here. And we see an improper response to death. And the second response we see is the desensitized crowd. If you continue on, we're going to skip down to verse 23 because in verses 20 through 22, we actually get an interrupting story. And we're going to look at that next week as we continue on. But skip down to verse 23, and I love it.
· It says here, it says, "When Jesus came to the leader's house, he saw the flute players in a crowd lamenting loudly." Now, let's give a little context here cuz they're like, "Why are there flute players and people yelling and like what's happening here?"
· But but let me set the scene for what a first century household looked like.
· this when someone's dying and passing away. In in Jewish culture, death required a very public ceremony and there was an entire industry that was built around it. There was professional mourers and there was paid grievers. You would pay people to help grieve and you'd hire flute players to set a somber tone. Uh writings from that time from rabbis, uh they tell us that even the poorest family in Israel was expected to have at minimum two flute players. All right. Playing a little flute, little like, you know, going over there. And I don't think they're made of metal.
· They're probably made of bone. But anyway, uh, so they're like playing the flute and then get this, and at least one whailing woman at the funeral. Yeah, I heard a gasp there. Whailing woman. I just picture in my mind a woman screaming while looking very angry. And maybe some of you know some whailing women in your life. I don't at all and none of you for sure. And I was hoping you would laugh at something, but you're just staring at me like you're all angry.
· I'll describe whailing women in more detail on Mother's Day next week if you want to have some information about it.
· But it was literally a job that someone paid for is they would hire a woman to come to a funeral to whail and make everyone around him know that this place is depressed cuz someone has died here.
· And and it gets better because that was for a poor family. You need at least one whailing woman and two flute players. If you were a little bit wealthier, they hired dozens more. They would have like a crowd around them in their community.
· Their job was to whail loudly, was to tear their clothes, was to make everyone in the neighborhood feel the weight of their grief and be depressed with them.
· And Jarius was a pretty big deal. Jarius was a synagogue ruler and leader. His house would have been packed with professionals mourning the death of his daughter. But the problem is it was a performance. It was an industry. It was grief as a service offered to you. Now in our day, we don't hire flute players.
· We don't have to become so desensitized to death that we instead hire ourselves out to help people mourn. But we do do some other things that I think make our heart a little harder to death. In our day, we scroll. In our day, we share posts and say, "Man, I'm so sorry for that loss. We share posts of celebrities who have died that we've never met and have no impact on our lives." And we're like, "I'm so so sad." Even though we don't actually care. We turn tragedy into content. We binge watch true crime shows and podcasts.
· We have become masters at processing death from a safe, comfortable, and emotionally manageable distance.
· And in that time, they hired these professionals to make sure the community knew people are mourning, but I could I could stay away from a little bit and I could manage this at a safe distance where I'm not having to get messy in the weeds of how this death affects me. But here's what's awesome. As Jesus walks into that house, he looks at the crowd and look at this in verse 24. I love what he says as he sees this whailing women, as he sees these flute players, as he sees all these fakers. And the first thing he says is, "Leave.
· Get out." Jesus is no nonsense. Like he walks into a room and he commands it. He walks in. He's like, "You're annoying me. Leave."
· And why does he say that? He says, "Because the girl is not dead, but asleep." And listen to what Matthew gives us commentary on. And they laughed at him. You catch that? The people who had been wailing 3 seconds ago are now laughing 3 seconds later.
· I don't know if your kids are like me, but my kids are professional fake criers. All right? Uh like when she got stung by a bee and was screaming like death was happening. I don't know if it's serious or it's not serious cuz every time they cry, I'm like, "Are you going to be okay?" And here's how I kind of try to break it is I just ask them questions to change the subject and see how they respond. So, as she's on her deathbed, Arya from her beasting and everything's so hard. I'm like, "Um I was like, "So, what did you do during soccer today? You didn't have a game.
· Did you play with your friends?" "Yeah, I played with all my friends." I was like, "Oh, who'd you play with?" But then she starts naming her friends. I'm like, "Oh, that's so cool." I was like, "Was it hot outside?" She's like, "I wasn't that hot." And I'm like, "I thought you were dying, right?" The tears switched. They dried up. And it was like a normal conversation. And I'm like, "Are you I thought" And I even said I was like, "Are you still hurt?"
· She's like, "Oh, yeah. So bad." I was like, "All right, here it goes back."
· And like Jesus walks in and he says, "Leave." He says, "She's not dead." And then they immediately break character.
· And all of a sudden, they're start laughing. And what it shows is how shallow their grief were that her tears could be turned off and on like a faucet. One minute they were sobbing at a dead girl, the next minute they are mocking the man who says that he can do something and he can raise her from the dead. And I want you to see what this reveals about them is they had become so professionalized in the business of death. They had be so so desensitized to death itself that they that it didn't affect them anymore. They could wail on demand.
· They could laugh on Q and but through all this they miss the son of God who walked in the door to change the life of everyone there. And here's the problem. This is what a desensitized world does. It might show up at every death, but it does not feel death. And here's the scariest part for us today is when we become desensitized to death, we eventually become desensitized to life.
· Because what you believe about one defines what you believe about the other. And when death becomes entertainment, life becomes cheap. When funerals become performances, weddings become productions, when mourning is just a paycheck, joy is just a product.
· And you see this happens in our world today in the culture that we have created where we are uniquely desensitized to death like never before.
· You see, we have and created this in a lot of different venues. One of them is from video games. I grew up playing Call of Duty and playing games where you were supposed to kill your other teammate or kill the people on the other team and that's what you did is you killed things, right? Is we play games where death is just like whatever. It's like fake. Okay, we put it off. And then we get things that are a little more realistic looking but still fake. We have movies and TV shows. I just watched Tulsa King yesterday and Sylvester Sloan is 75 but still killing a lot of people.
· And we watch those and we're like, "Eh, it's fake. It doesn't mean anything."
· And then we scroll our phone and we see AI videos that look real and a guy jumps off a bridge. You're like, "Is that real?" And then he hits the ground.
· You're like, I really hope that wasn't real, but it looked really real. But then it even comes to the point where now right on our phones, we see death and wars and in tragedies happen right in front of our face. They estimate that teenage the American teenager has watched thousands of people die on their screen before them. And you see, we have become as a culture desensitized to this thing that all of us face. This thing that none of us can defeat. this thing that is coming for us all and this thing that should shake us to our core.
· But it's just like it's just another Monday. I've seen that before.
· And you see the crowd in that house, they didn't need Jesus to do a miracle because a miracle would have been inconvenient for them. A miracle would have disrupted their business. They were walking out being like, "Man, I didn't get paid for this cuz the girl came back alive. She was supposed to stay dead, so I got the check." But he said, "No, I'm not going to pay for it until her next funeral." Right? He's like they were mad and inconvenienced because they had become so desensitized to it that they couldn't even recognize the God that defeated that death.
· And you see church, I think this is a warning for every one of us is you can be in the house of the ruler surrounded by real tragedy and still miss the presence of Jesus because you become too professional at death to be open to a resurrection.
· But thank God there was a third response in that house. We see the desperate family. We see the desensitized crowd.
· But then we see the dynamic savior. As the story keeps going and winds down in verse 25, it says, "After the crowd had been put outside, he went in. He took her by the hand and the girl got up."
· Matthew doesn't like build into this.
· He's like, "Jesus went inside. He took her by the hand." And she's like, "Get up."
· like he doesn't build the drama. And we read that and you're like, whoa. We're like, she's wait, she's alive. I thought she was dead. She's but she's alive now.
· And it didn't even like Jesus didn't even do anything drastic or crazy. But I think there's three things we need to see from this as Matthew kind of leads the end of the story. The first is I don't want you to miss at the beginning of the verse. It said the crowd had been put outside. It is Jesus put the crowd outside. Mark's gospel actually gets a little more graphic in this is it says he literally threw them out of the house. We see righteous angry Jesus later on in his ministry where he flips tables in the temple. But this is another place where we probably get a little righteous anger of Jesus. He literally threw them out.
· He probably I I wonder how strong he was a carpenter and he's God. So maybe if he has God strength, he just brings all like Superman. I hope he just grabbed one of them and like threw him outside. He's like, "Get out of my way, fools. Like you're laughing. You're mocking me. Get out." And he literally throws the crowd outside. And and here's the thing is sometimes that Jesus he he was going he did this because he was not going to perform a resurrection surrounded by mockers and professional cynics. So he got them out of there.
· And and here's what this means for us is sometimes I think Jesus wants to clear some things out of our life before he does the thing that we can't explain anyone else. Sometimes the voice is telling you just like the voice is telling Jarius that she's dead. Nothing else can be done. It's over. Give up.
· those voices have to be put out and we need to let Jesus in to do his work. So he he removes the crowd from the room. But the second thing we see in this verse is he took her by the hand.
· This is a big deal cuz for a first century Jew touching a dead body meant immediately he would be ceremonially unclean. Actually numbers chapter 19 says that anyone who touched a dead body would have to isolate themselves and could not come into the temple or the synagogue for 7 days. They were unclean.
· But watch what happens when Jesus walks in. When Jesus touches the unclean, he here's what's important is Jesus doesn't become unclean. Instead, the unclean becomes clean. You following that?
· It's amazing in here is when he touches the dead, all of a sudden Jesus doesn't become dead. Instead, the dead becomes alive. When Jesus does something, power only passes one way from Jesus. that our sin, our grossness, our brokenness, the ways we have failed, when we come to Jesus, we cannot give our darkness to him. The only thing he can do is give his grace, his love, and his resurrection to us. And here when he touches it, that power flows one way.
· What was unclean all of a sudden becomes clean. And then the third thing we see is the girl got up. As we said, Matthew is so restrained here. He gives one sentence, no drama, no elaborate description, just he took her by the hand and she got up.
· Mark gives us a little more detail, a little more drama. He he says the words that Jesus said in the words, the phrase that Jesus actually said at this time is said in the Aramaic, he says tala kum, which means little girl, I say to you, get up. And those words in Aramaic, it's two words, tala kum. And that's all it took to bring this girl to life. And here is what's important. This is where we need to do a little Old Testament history that makes this scene so much greater. In the Old Testament, there's a prophet Elijah. And Elijah once raised a boy from the dead in First Kings 17.
· But in order to raise him from the dead, he had to stretch himself over the body three times and pray out loud, "Oh Lord, my God, let this boy's life come back to him." Elisha, not Elijah. Elisha also raised a boy from the dead in 2 Kings 4.
· And he thought Elijah had it hard throwing his body and wailing and yelling to God to get this. Elisha was more complicated. He had to walk back and forth in the room. He had to climb on the body. He had to put his mouth on the boy's mouth almost like performing CPR. He had to stretch over him. He had to get down. He had to pace again, then climb back on. If I was Elisha, I'd be like, "Can you put those details written out?" I'm like, if I follow a recipe, I need to follow it line by line. God, that's pretty complicated. Can you can you pace this out for me? But when he did that, all of a sudden, the boy sneezed seven times and opened his eyes.
· And here's the thing. Resurrections have happened in the Bible before in the Old Testament, but they're crazy. They're elaborate. There there's all this stuff to it. Elijah prayed for life. Elisha begged for life. Jesus, on the other hand, commanded life.
· Because here's the deal. Because he is the life. And what's so important is this is not just another resurrection story that's tucked in the middle of Matthew. This is Jesus writing his own signature, calling his shot on the gospel because you fast forward about 2 years from this moment and Jesus will be on a cross. He will bleed out. His heart will stop. They will take him down from the wood. They will wrap him in linen cloths. They will place him in a borrowed tomb. And they will roll a massive stone across the entrance.
· But 3 days later, there was no prophet that stood at the tomb. That was an amen.
· There was no disciple that was stretched out over his body. There was nobody that prayed him back. There was nobody that chanted him back. Nobody begged him back. Instead, Jesus simply got up and walked out of that tomb. Because Jesus doesn't have authority, doesn't just have authority over death. He is the Lord over death that commands death that defeats death. And that life comes through him alone.
· You see every previous resurrection in scripture, the widow's son in first king, the Schumanites boy in second king, Lazarus, and even this little 12year-old girl in Jarius's house, every one of them eventually would die again. Their resurrections were temporary. But when Jesus walked out of that tomb on Easter morning, he didn't walk out to go die again.
· Instead, scripture tells us he walked out as the first fruits of a resurrection that guarantees us as the first fruits of a resurrection that never ends. Because Jesus raised from the grave, we can have a resurrection where we raised from the grave for all of eternity. And look at verse 26.
· as all this story unfolds, as all this, they're thinking of the Old Testament, of how he's raised from the grave. But then this is also thinking forward to what ultimately will happen, foreshadowing it in verse 26. I love this. It says, "The news of this spread throughout that whole area."
· Think about how this verse actually played out. It's funny when you look in Mark and Luke. Jesus said, "Don't tell anyone about this." and they just told everyone about it. Now we're in the flip side is we tell everyone go tell everyone about Jesus and we don't tell anyone about Jesus. All right, we need a little course correct there but that's a different sermon.
· But in here this miraculous happens and all of a sudden the news of this started to spread. That story got told. That story got passed on. And it traveled from household to household across Galilee and beyond. And throughout that region and throughout history 2,000 years ago, we're still telling it in surprise Arizona. But here's what I want you to wrestle with. As everyone in that house spread a story that day, too.
· The desperate family spread news of joy and the news of a savior that they'd been inside the tomb and they had come out celebrating that their lives their little girl that what they thought was hopeless hope had come. The desensitized crowd spread news of a disruption of you won't believe what this Jesus guy did. He ruined our day. He ruined our paycheck. He ruined our life. We had this whole gig set up and he screwed it up for us.
· And today you are spreading something about death too. Every conversation at a funeral, every Facebook post when a friend loses a parent, every text you send to the family in the hospital, every word you speak to your own kids about what happens when we die. We spread news a story about what we believe about death.
· And this is where we need to be honest with oursel where we need to reflect where we need to dig deep and convict ourselves is which response to death are you spreading?
· Which response are you spreading that we see in this story and that we see today?
· Because you are spreading something.
· Are you spreading desperation that doesn't lead to Jesus?
· Jarius had no hope and he could have very well ran to every other way that the people in his day told him to run, but he chose to run to Jesus. But sometimes in our desperation, we just want to give up. We just want to say there is no hope.
· What is the point of even going on?
· Are you spreading a news that is desensitized in our world today that we just shrug our shoulders when death happens? That we just shrug our shoulders when hard things happen? Be like, "That's just the way it is. We live in a broken, messed up world." Eh, or are you spreading the dynamic savior, the news that says death doesn't get the final word because Jesus does.
· Here's the deal. If you are a believer in the room this morning or watching online, this story should ground you that in the middle of whatever grief and hardship that you are going through, that you are carrying around with you, that the Jesus who took a 12year-old by the hand and raised her from death is the name Jesus that stands with us today.
· He's with us at every hospital bed, every graveside, every funeral home. The power of that God is with us. Death does not get the last word in your family. Death does not get the last word over your faith. Death does not get the final word because Jesus does. Maybe he's telling you to get up. Keep going. Keep pressing. Keep trusting. I've got this. And here's the challenge.
· Here's where this gets real. Here's how this impacts us as believers and what this calls us to do that is so different than the world. When we read this passage, you know what it tells me when we say, "What are we spreading about death?"
· It convicts me and it convicts you to say what you need to stop spreading. Church, we need to stop spreading fear. We need to stop living and posting online like we are an atheist that has no hope. We need to stop yelling about how awful the economy is or how good the economy is or how that is what depends our mood in life.
· We need to stop building doomsday bunkers. If zombies come, we're all dead anyway. But we get to spend eternity in heaven. We need to stop ranting online about how the liberals or the conservatives or anyone you disagree with is ruining the world. We're all ruining cuz we're all broken.
· We need to stop acting like our world is hopeless because we know one who has hope. WE NEED TO STOP ACTING LIKE our lives are a mess cuz gas is over $4. What are you going to do? YOU GOING TO WALK EVERYWHERE? WE'RE IN PHOENIX, PEOPLE. But we know, WE TRUST, we love, we follow, WE PURSUE THE JESUS CHRIST WHO HAS AUTHORITY OVER DEATH AND HE IS OURS. CHURCH, stop grieving like those who have no hope.
· Stop mourning like the professionals in this passage that are paid to spread fear in discourse. And start spreading the hope of the dynamic savior, Jesus Christ, who changes everything. And maybe you're here today and you don't trust that Jesus yet.
· And I'm already over my time, so I'm not going to give a long altar call. But I am going to challenge and convict you that stop coming to the things of this world that will never fill you, that will never give you hope, the money, the power, the influence, the lust, the list can go on and on and on. We pursue it. We come to it.
· But we need to be like Jarius, but we need to come to Christ. that even though I'm surrounded by death, surrounded by hardships, surrounded by problems that I cannot conquer, Jesus has done it. And he wants you to live in light of that truth. He wants to declare you to declare that he is Lord and that your death will not be the final word, but that you will spend eternity with him.
· In just a moment, we're going to witness that as people declare in an act of baptism that death does not have the final word, but Jesus does. And we get to live spreading that response to the world around us.
Part of Series
Miracles of Jesus
View all episodesAudio Version
Listen to the sermon
Transcript
· When Jesus touches the unclean, Jesus doesn't become unclean. Instead, the unclean becomes clean. You following that? When he touches the dead, all of a sudden, Jesus doesn't become dead.
· Instead, the dead becomes alive. When Jesus does something, power only passes one way from Jesus. Our sin, our grossness, our brokenness, the ways we have failed, when we come to Jesus, we cannot give our darkness to him. The only thing he can do is give his grace, his love, and his resurrection to us.
· But hey, we are so excited that you're here. As we said, we're continuing on in our series uh through miracles. And if you have a Bible, go ahead and grab it and go to Matthew chapter 9. We're going to be starting in verse 18. And here's what I want to encourage you to do as you flip there is grab your Bible, open it up to Matthew or you can grab Bible on your phone, but then also grab the notes either that you walked in with or you can scan the QR code in front of you or behind me. We want you to take notes and not fall asleep. All right? Not on my jokes, but on the word of God and what it's going to call us to do.
· And here's what's been so exciting about this series as we've gone through the miracles of Christ is we have asked this question over and over again is what kind of man is this? They ask it in Matthew chapter 8 27 is is who is this Jesus guy? And as we've gone, we've seen that he is the Jesus who has authority over nature. How he is the God, the Jesus who has authority over demons.
· Last week, we saw how he has authority over sin and he could tell a lame man to get up and walk. He says, "Your sins are forgiven now. Get up and walk." How crazy is that? This guy's been paralyzed his whole life. And Jesus is like, "Walk." He's like, "That's why I'm here.
· I can't walk." He's like, "No, do it."
· and he does it. Well, today as Jesus continues to confront stuff, confront the storms, to confront the demons and the dark forces, to confront our sin.
· Today, we see something that Jesus confronts that means something for all of us is he confronts death itself. You see, death is one of those obstacles that no matter who we are, all of us will have to face death. And here's the crazy thing about death is death has an undefeated record when it comes to humans and regular people. Is every time we come up against death, death wins and we lose. And death is one of those inevitable things that all of us will face at some point and has already impacted you in some way.
· Maybe if you have been to that funeral of a grandparent or family member and was expected and that sickness kept dra dragging on and and you knew it was coming, but when that funeral comes, it doesn't make it any easier. Or maybe you've been to those funerals of an unexpected spouse that has passed and that pain just hits you and you don't know how to move forward. Maybe you are still grieving the loss of a child, something that should never happen but in this broken world does.
· Well, today as we enter this scene in Matthew chapter 9, we see how Jesus walks into this scenario where death has already made its mark, but how Jesus shows us who he is and how we respond to it. And here is our miraculous truth that we see revealed throughout this passage is how we respond to death reveals what we believe about life.
· You see, in this story, it's going to be filled with different responses of those who run to Christ, those who mock Christ, and those who show up and show what authority is that is greater in Christ. But for us, as we dive into this passage, when we will all face death, the question becomes, how do we face it? How do we respond to it? And what does that reveal about how we view this life and how we go day by day?
· As we dive into these three responses to death, the first thing that we are going to see throughout this passage that Matthew sets up for us, and I love this passage that we've seen throughout all these miracles is Matthew doesn't just tell this story, but Mark and Luke tell it as well. And they give us some more details as this unravels. But what we're going to see first, so the first response to death in this passage is the response of the desperate family.
· Matthew chapter 9 starting in verse 18.
· As we dive into the story, it says this.
· As he Jesus was telling him these things, suddenly one of the leaders came and knelt down before him, saying, "My daughter has just died.
· Death has made its mark." But he says, "But come and lay your hand on her and she will live." You see Matthew as we get into this story, he simply starts it and he says this that one of the leaders came out. Mark and Luke fill in the details a little bit more and fill in this picture is this leader's name was Jarius and he was actually a ruler of the synagogue in Capernaum. And then this is important is Capernaum was Jesus' home base which we already see him perform a miracle of raising the paralytic and bringing him up.
· But here we also see a little more context to this is why it was so important is this leader of the synagogue was a big deal that as a synagogue ruler is one of the most respected positions in a Jewish community. He ran the worship services.
· He decided who taught. He sat in the front row. You probably wish you could do all that but sitting in the front row, right? You wish you could come to church and decide who teaches. You're like, I don't know if I want that guy today. Can you put like like, you know, have a little roulette just throw people in. He he carried the keys to the building. I have keys to the church as you'd probably imagine and thankfully other people do too because when you have keys to a church, if you're the last one with keys that is there, that means you have to make sure it's all locked up before you go. Um that's why I try to leave before the other people with keys can leave so I don't have to lock up and see it all.
· But this was a big deal for all of him is Jarius had respect in the community. Jarius was somebody in the religious world of Capernaum. He was put on a pedestal. He had the title. He had the standing. He had the house. He had the career. By every external measure, his life was working. He was successful.
· And then his 12-year-old daughter got sick.
· And when she got sick, she ended up dying. And all of a sudden, this guy who looked like he had it all together, his life just unraveled in a moment.
· As I was reading this past couple weeks, past month, and preparing for this passage, as a dad of four, this one kind of cut deep because there are times when your kids are sick and you just feel absolutely helpless. It's I remember being when having babies and little children in the house and when they're coughing, you have like no idea. They're like, "Are they going to die? Are they well? Do I take them to the hospital now?" Like, you just feel so helpless cuz you can't do anything. I want to just like bubble wrap our kids when they were little, but then the more kids you have, the more you actually just want to expose them to danger. I'm like, take off the bubble wrap.
· Go hurt yourself, right? Uh go fall, feel like you need to learn risk and like don't break your arm cuz that'll cost me money, but do everything short of a hospital visit.
· So, you learn your lessons. Just yesterday, my my daughter, we're out playing outside cuz it's getting hot and she's on a giant inflatable bounce house, and she just screams bloody murder. And this is my my oldest daughter, my nine-year-old Ari. And I'm like, we're like go over like what's I was like, man, one of her brothers kicked her in the face again. Like, what's happening? And I go over there and she's like, I got stung by a bee.
· Now, I don't know if there there wasn't any beasting, so she might have been kind of But she got stung by something.
· And literally, I thought she was going to die based on her reaction. And the reaction continued through the whole night. She all of a sudden she couldn't eat dinner cuz she just felt too. All of a sudden, her entire body hurt. I'm like, what hurts? Everything. I'm like, how does it hurt? it just all hurts and is in pain. And she literally in her bed as I'm wrapping up after I gave her benadryil, which is an antihistamine in case she's allergic, but also makes her go to sleep.
· As she's laying in her bed, she asked me, "Am I going to die?" I'm like, "Oh, you said I had to hold it together cuz inside I did not say, "Ah, all right." But I was like, "No, honey. You're going to be all right." She did wake up fine by this way this morning. All right. So, the be was okay. But in those moments as a dad, as a mom, when your kids get hurt, when your kids get sick, when your kids do things that are outside of your power, you feel so helpless.
· And we see this story that this leader of Jarius, and here's what I think we need to see in here. Nothing in his title could save her. Nothing in his position could bring his little 12-year-old daughter back from the edge.
· The prayers he had prayed in the synagogue were not answered how he wanted them to be. The offerings he had overseen did not change anything. The respect that he had earned could not turn the tide. None of it mattered when his little girl stopped breathing.
· So this man, this ruler, this religious leader, this pillar of the community, he ran out of his house and he fell at the feet of a carpenter from Nazareth.
· Now, we get a little unfair advantage because we know Jesus is kind of this big deal. But in this time, Jesus just some wandering carpenter who's probably a year into his ministry that hear these rumblings. Some think he's a heretic.
· Some think he's a crazy person. The only thing they know is he's a carpenter by trade. And what's huge in this and we can't miss this in the grief of Jarius.
· In his desperation, the ruler of the synagogue knelt before Jesus. Matthew words uses the word for kneeling of meaning worship. He was worshiping a carpenter desperate for help.
· You look at what he says when he falls at the feet of Jesus. He says, "My daughter just died." But he says, "But come and lay your hands on her and she will live." I I love this because this is theology that is shaped by desperation. This is faith that is forged in fire. He didn't come with a formula. He didn't come with a bargain.
· Instead, he came with a corpse in the other room and a belief that Jesus could do something about it. And catch these two words. And if you are a highlighter, if you're an underliner in your Bible, I would underline or highlight these words. And he says, "But come." He says, "My daughter just died. I can't do anything about it. I tried to prevent it. I had the best doctors. I did everything I could, but she has died."
· But he says this, "But come."
· That sentence should end at my daughter has died, but come is the transition that opens this sentence again. Two of the most hopeful words in the gospel.
· Death had just won. Death had the last word. But this desperate dad says, "Jesus, come." Because he believed the word of Jesus was bigger than the word of death.
· You've walked in this morning and I don't know what you're carrying. Maybe you have grief. Maybe you have anxiety.
· Maybe you have a weight that is on you that you just can't feel. As much as you work, it doesn't seem to go away. As much as you keep striving, it doesn't seem like things are better. I love the thing as an adult, all we keep saying is, "I'm really busy in this season, but it's going to get better." And it doesn't slow down, and it doesn't get better. or it just keeps being busy. And maybe you've walked in and there is a wait on you. But maybe you need to pray a prayer like this to God today is but come God. I know all this is going on.
· But come, God, I know my finances are a wreck. But come, God, I know my kids are making bad decisions. But come, God, I know my job is unbearable. But come, God, I know my marriage is in shambles, but come, God, the world seems to be on fire and doesn't seem to be getting better, but God, come.
· And he tells this to Jesus, "But come."
· And look at how Jesus responds in verse 19. As he says, "But come," it says, "So Jesus and his disciples, they got up and they followed him."
· We can't rush past this.
· The synagogue ruler that came worshiping Jesus and Jesus followed him home.
· That's what happens when you bring your desperation to Jesus. He moves towards you. Desperation drives us to Jesus.
· Often, if we're not careful, pride pushes away. But here, this family chose desperation. As they come to Jesus, Jesus comes to them. This past week, I was listening to a story of a actor, former actor, I think, and he's now more of a podcaster and YouTuber and guy that just talks online that everyone thinks they can do, but you probably can't. But he he does stuff online. His name is Russell Brand, and he's like British or European.
· There is a little bit of a I don't know if that was an ah or like uh um but he he talks and he has a really heavy accent so I only understand like every fourth word he actually says. Um but he lived a crazy life and his acting and everything else but about 2 years ago he started reading the Bible and exploring a faith in Christ. And about a year and a half ago or so he committed his life to Christ and says he follows Jesus.
· And in this interview he did last year that I was listening to as he's talking about his faith, they asked him, they're like, "When did you come to Jesus? Tell us about that time you came to Jesus." And he kind of laughed for a second. He's like, "I came to Jesus after I came to everything else first."
· He came to everything else in life. He tried that. He tried this. And how often is that our story? where we come to all the things the world promises is we come to try to see if it will bring us satisfaction, if it will bring us uh purpose, if it will fill our hearts. We come to money and to influence and to power. We come to sex and to drugs and addictions and the list can go on and on and on and on. And we come to those things often before we come to Jesus.
· And in our desperation, we come to him.
· But the beauty is when we come to him, even in our desperation, he comes to us.
· And here's what's beautiful in this story is the story does not end there.
· And it's not the only response is we see this desperate family. But then we get a little hard turn here. And we see an improper response to death. And the second response we see is the desensitized crowd. If you continue on, we're going to skip down to verse 23 because in verses 20 through 22, we actually get an interrupting story. And we're going to look at that next week as we continue on. But skip down to verse 23, and I love it.
· It says here, it says, "When Jesus came to the leader's house, he saw the flute players in a crowd lamenting loudly." Now, let's give a little context here cuz they're like, "Why are there flute players and people yelling and like what's happening here?"
· But but let me set the scene for what a first century household looked like.
· this when someone's dying and passing away. In in Jewish culture, death required a very public ceremony and there was an entire industry that was built around it. There was professional mourers and there was paid grievers. You would pay people to help grieve and you'd hire flute players to set a somber tone. Uh writings from that time from rabbis, uh they tell us that even the poorest family in Israel was expected to have at minimum two flute players. All right. Playing a little flute, little like, you know, going over there. And I don't think they're made of metal.
· They're probably made of bone. But anyway, uh, so they're like playing the flute and then get this, and at least one whailing woman at the funeral. Yeah, I heard a gasp there. Whailing woman. I just picture in my mind a woman screaming while looking very angry. And maybe some of you know some whailing women in your life. I don't at all and none of you for sure. And I was hoping you would laugh at something, but you're just staring at me like you're all angry.
· I'll describe whailing women in more detail on Mother's Day next week if you want to have some information about it.
· But it was literally a job that someone paid for is they would hire a woman to come to a funeral to whail and make everyone around him know that this place is depressed cuz someone has died here.
· And and it gets better because that was for a poor family. You need at least one whailing woman and two flute players. If you were a little bit wealthier, they hired dozens more. They would have like a crowd around them in their community.
· Their job was to whail loudly, was to tear their clothes, was to make everyone in the neighborhood feel the weight of their grief and be depressed with them.
· And Jarius was a pretty big deal. Jarius was a synagogue ruler and leader. His house would have been packed with professionals mourning the death of his daughter. But the problem is it was a performance. It was an industry. It was grief as a service offered to you. Now in our day, we don't hire flute players.
· We don't have to become so desensitized to death that we instead hire ourselves out to help people mourn. But we do do some other things that I think make our heart a little harder to death. In our day, we scroll. In our day, we share posts and say, "Man, I'm so sorry for that loss. We share posts of celebrities who have died that we've never met and have no impact on our lives." And we're like, "I'm so so sad." Even though we don't actually care. We turn tragedy into content. We binge watch true crime shows and podcasts.
· We have become masters at processing death from a safe, comfortable, and emotionally manageable distance.
· And in that time, they hired these professionals to make sure the community knew people are mourning, but I could I could stay away from a little bit and I could manage this at a safe distance where I'm not having to get messy in the weeds of how this death affects me. But here's what's awesome. As Jesus walks into that house, he looks at the crowd and look at this in verse 24. I love what he says as he sees this whailing women, as he sees these flute players, as he sees all these fakers. And the first thing he says is, "Leave.
· Get out." Jesus is no nonsense. Like he walks into a room and he commands it. He walks in. He's like, "You're annoying me. Leave."
· And why does he say that? He says, "Because the girl is not dead, but asleep." And listen to what Matthew gives us commentary on. And they laughed at him. You catch that? The people who had been wailing 3 seconds ago are now laughing 3 seconds later.
· I don't know if your kids are like me, but my kids are professional fake criers. All right? Uh like when she got stung by a bee and was screaming like death was happening. I don't know if it's serious or it's not serious cuz every time they cry, I'm like, "Are you going to be okay?" And here's how I kind of try to break it is I just ask them questions to change the subject and see how they respond. So, as she's on her deathbed, Arya from her beasting and everything's so hard. I'm like, "Um I was like, "So, what did you do during soccer today? You didn't have a game.
· Did you play with your friends?" "Yeah, I played with all my friends." I was like, "Oh, who'd you play with?" But then she starts naming her friends. I'm like, "Oh, that's so cool." I was like, "Was it hot outside?" She's like, "I wasn't that hot." And I'm like, "I thought you were dying, right?" The tears switched. They dried up. And it was like a normal conversation. And I'm like, "Are you I thought" And I even said I was like, "Are you still hurt?"
· She's like, "Oh, yeah. So bad." I was like, "All right, here it goes back."
· And like Jesus walks in and he says, "Leave." He says, "She's not dead." And then they immediately break character.
· And all of a sudden, they're start laughing. And what it shows is how shallow their grief were that her tears could be turned off and on like a faucet. One minute they were sobbing at a dead girl, the next minute they are mocking the man who says that he can do something and he can raise her from the dead. And I want you to see what this reveals about them is they had become so professionalized in the business of death. They had be so so desensitized to death itself that they that it didn't affect them anymore. They could wail on demand.
· They could laugh on Q and but through all this they miss the son of God who walked in the door to change the life of everyone there. And here's the problem. This is what a desensitized world does. It might show up at every death, but it does not feel death. And here's the scariest part for us today is when we become desensitized to death, we eventually become desensitized to life.
· Because what you believe about one defines what you believe about the other. And when death becomes entertainment, life becomes cheap. When funerals become performances, weddings become productions, when mourning is just a paycheck, joy is just a product.
· And you see this happens in our world today in the culture that we have created where we are uniquely desensitized to death like never before.
· You see, we have and created this in a lot of different venues. One of them is from video games. I grew up playing Call of Duty and playing games where you were supposed to kill your other teammate or kill the people on the other team and that's what you did is you killed things, right? Is we play games where death is just like whatever. It's like fake. Okay, we put it off. And then we get things that are a little more realistic looking but still fake. We have movies and TV shows. I just watched Tulsa King yesterday and Sylvester Sloan is 75 but still killing a lot of people.
· And we watch those and we're like, "Eh, it's fake. It doesn't mean anything."
· And then we scroll our phone and we see AI videos that look real and a guy jumps off a bridge. You're like, "Is that real?" And then he hits the ground.
· You're like, I really hope that wasn't real, but it looked really real. But then it even comes to the point where now right on our phones, we see death and wars and in tragedies happen right in front of our face. They estimate that teenage the American teenager has watched thousands of people die on their screen before them. And you see, we have become as a culture desensitized to this thing that all of us face. This thing that none of us can defeat. this thing that is coming for us all and this thing that should shake us to our core.
· But it's just like it's just another Monday. I've seen that before.
· And you see the crowd in that house, they didn't need Jesus to do a miracle because a miracle would have been inconvenient for them. A miracle would have disrupted their business. They were walking out being like, "Man, I didn't get paid for this cuz the girl came back alive. She was supposed to stay dead, so I got the check." But he said, "No, I'm not going to pay for it until her next funeral." Right? He's like they were mad and inconvenienced because they had become so desensitized to it that they couldn't even recognize the God that defeated that death.
· And you see church, I think this is a warning for every one of us is you can be in the house of the ruler surrounded by real tragedy and still miss the presence of Jesus because you become too professional at death to be open to a resurrection.
· But thank God there was a third response in that house. We see the desperate family. We see the desensitized crowd.
· But then we see the dynamic savior. As the story keeps going and winds down in verse 25, it says, "After the crowd had been put outside, he went in. He took her by the hand and the girl got up."
· Matthew doesn't like build into this.
· He's like, "Jesus went inside. He took her by the hand." And she's like, "Get up."
· like he doesn't build the drama. And we read that and you're like, whoa. We're like, she's wait, she's alive. I thought she was dead. She's but she's alive now.
· And it didn't even like Jesus didn't even do anything drastic or crazy. But I think there's three things we need to see from this as Matthew kind of leads the end of the story. The first is I don't want you to miss at the beginning of the verse. It said the crowd had been put outside. It is Jesus put the crowd outside. Mark's gospel actually gets a little more graphic in this is it says he literally threw them out of the house. We see righteous angry Jesus later on in his ministry where he flips tables in the temple. But this is another place where we probably get a little righteous anger of Jesus. He literally threw them out.
· He probably I I wonder how strong he was a carpenter and he's God. So maybe if he has God strength, he just brings all like Superman. I hope he just grabbed one of them and like threw him outside. He's like, "Get out of my way, fools. Like you're laughing. You're mocking me. Get out." And he literally throws the crowd outside. And and here's the thing is sometimes that Jesus he he was going he did this because he was not going to perform a resurrection surrounded by mockers and professional cynics. So he got them out of there.
· And and here's what this means for us is sometimes I think Jesus wants to clear some things out of our life before he does the thing that we can't explain anyone else. Sometimes the voice is telling you just like the voice is telling Jarius that she's dead. Nothing else can be done. It's over. Give up.
· those voices have to be put out and we need to let Jesus in to do his work. So he he removes the crowd from the room. But the second thing we see in this verse is he took her by the hand.
· This is a big deal cuz for a first century Jew touching a dead body meant immediately he would be ceremonially unclean. Actually numbers chapter 19 says that anyone who touched a dead body would have to isolate themselves and could not come into the temple or the synagogue for 7 days. They were unclean.
· But watch what happens when Jesus walks in. When Jesus touches the unclean, he here's what's important is Jesus doesn't become unclean. Instead, the unclean becomes clean. You following that?
· It's amazing in here is when he touches the dead, all of a sudden Jesus doesn't become dead. Instead, the dead becomes alive. When Jesus does something, power only passes one way from Jesus. that our sin, our grossness, our brokenness, the ways we have failed, when we come to Jesus, we cannot give our darkness to him. The only thing he can do is give his grace, his love, and his resurrection to us. And here when he touches it, that power flows one way.
· What was unclean all of a sudden becomes clean. And then the third thing we see is the girl got up. As we said, Matthew is so restrained here. He gives one sentence, no drama, no elaborate description, just he took her by the hand and she got up.
· Mark gives us a little more detail, a little more drama. He he says the words that Jesus said in the words, the phrase that Jesus actually said at this time is said in the Aramaic, he says tala kum, which means little girl, I say to you, get up. And those words in Aramaic, it's two words, tala kum. And that's all it took to bring this girl to life. And here is what's important. This is where we need to do a little Old Testament history that makes this scene so much greater. In the Old Testament, there's a prophet Elijah. And Elijah once raised a boy from the dead in First Kings 17.
· But in order to raise him from the dead, he had to stretch himself over the body three times and pray out loud, "Oh Lord, my God, let this boy's life come back to him." Elisha, not Elijah. Elisha also raised a boy from the dead in 2 Kings 4.
· And he thought Elijah had it hard throwing his body and wailing and yelling to God to get this. Elisha was more complicated. He had to walk back and forth in the room. He had to climb on the body. He had to put his mouth on the boy's mouth almost like performing CPR. He had to stretch over him. He had to get down. He had to pace again, then climb back on. If I was Elisha, I'd be like, "Can you put those details written out?" I'm like, if I follow a recipe, I need to follow it line by line. God, that's pretty complicated. Can you can you pace this out for me? But when he did that, all of a sudden, the boy sneezed seven times and opened his eyes.
· And here's the thing. Resurrections have happened in the Bible before in the Old Testament, but they're crazy. They're elaborate. There there's all this stuff to it. Elijah prayed for life. Elisha begged for life. Jesus, on the other hand, commanded life.
· Because here's the deal. Because he is the life. And what's so important is this is not just another resurrection story that's tucked in the middle of Matthew. This is Jesus writing his own signature, calling his shot on the gospel because you fast forward about 2 years from this moment and Jesus will be on a cross. He will bleed out. His heart will stop. They will take him down from the wood. They will wrap him in linen cloths. They will place him in a borrowed tomb. And they will roll a massive stone across the entrance.
· But 3 days later, there was no prophet that stood at the tomb. That was an amen.
· There was no disciple that was stretched out over his body. There was nobody that prayed him back. There was nobody that chanted him back. Nobody begged him back. Instead, Jesus simply got up and walked out of that tomb. Because Jesus doesn't have authority, doesn't just have authority over death. He is the Lord over death that commands death that defeats death. And that life comes through him alone.
· You see every previous resurrection in scripture, the widow's son in first king, the Schumanites boy in second king, Lazarus, and even this little 12year-old girl in Jarius's house, every one of them eventually would die again. Their resurrections were temporary. But when Jesus walked out of that tomb on Easter morning, he didn't walk out to go die again.
· Instead, scripture tells us he walked out as the first fruits of a resurrection that guarantees us as the first fruits of a resurrection that never ends. Because Jesus raised from the grave, we can have a resurrection where we raised from the grave for all of eternity. And look at verse 26.
· as all this story unfolds, as all this, they're thinking of the Old Testament, of how he's raised from the grave. But then this is also thinking forward to what ultimately will happen, foreshadowing it in verse 26. I love this. It says, "The news of this spread throughout that whole area."
· Think about how this verse actually played out. It's funny when you look in Mark and Luke. Jesus said, "Don't tell anyone about this." and they just told everyone about it. Now we're in the flip side is we tell everyone go tell everyone about Jesus and we don't tell anyone about Jesus. All right, we need a little course correct there but that's a different sermon.
· But in here this miraculous happens and all of a sudden the news of this started to spread. That story got told. That story got passed on. And it traveled from household to household across Galilee and beyond. And throughout that region and throughout history 2,000 years ago, we're still telling it in surprise Arizona. But here's what I want you to wrestle with. As everyone in that house spread a story that day, too.
· The desperate family spread news of joy and the news of a savior that they'd been inside the tomb and they had come out celebrating that their lives their little girl that what they thought was hopeless hope had come. The desensitized crowd spread news of a disruption of you won't believe what this Jesus guy did. He ruined our day. He ruined our paycheck. He ruined our life. We had this whole gig set up and he screwed it up for us.
· And today you are spreading something about death too. Every conversation at a funeral, every Facebook post when a friend loses a parent, every text you send to the family in the hospital, every word you speak to your own kids about what happens when we die. We spread news a story about what we believe about death.
· And this is where we need to be honest with oursel where we need to reflect where we need to dig deep and convict ourselves is which response to death are you spreading?
· Which response are you spreading that we see in this story and that we see today?
· Because you are spreading something.
· Are you spreading desperation that doesn't lead to Jesus?
· Jarius had no hope and he could have very well ran to every other way that the people in his day told him to run, but he chose to run to Jesus. But sometimes in our desperation, we just want to give up. We just want to say there is no hope.
· What is the point of even going on?
· Are you spreading a news that is desensitized in our world today that we just shrug our shoulders when death happens? That we just shrug our shoulders when hard things happen? Be like, "That's just the way it is. We live in a broken, messed up world." Eh, or are you spreading the dynamic savior, the news that says death doesn't get the final word because Jesus does.
· Here's the deal. If you are a believer in the room this morning or watching online, this story should ground you that in the middle of whatever grief and hardship that you are going through, that you are carrying around with you, that the Jesus who took a 12year-old by the hand and raised her from death is the name Jesus that stands with us today.
· He's with us at every hospital bed, every graveside, every funeral home. The power of that God is with us. Death does not get the last word in your family. Death does not get the last word over your faith. Death does not get the final word because Jesus does. Maybe he's telling you to get up. Keep going. Keep pressing. Keep trusting. I've got this. And here's the challenge.
· Here's where this gets real. Here's how this impacts us as believers and what this calls us to do that is so different than the world. When we read this passage, you know what it tells me when we say, "What are we spreading about death?"
· It convicts me and it convicts you to say what you need to stop spreading. Church, we need to stop spreading fear. We need to stop living and posting online like we are an atheist that has no hope. We need to stop yelling about how awful the economy is or how good the economy is or how that is what depends our mood in life.
· We need to stop building doomsday bunkers. If zombies come, we're all dead anyway. But we get to spend eternity in heaven. We need to stop ranting online about how the liberals or the conservatives or anyone you disagree with is ruining the world. We're all ruining cuz we're all broken.
· We need to stop acting like our world is hopeless because we know one who has hope. WE NEED TO STOP ACTING LIKE our lives are a mess cuz gas is over $4. What are you going to do? YOU GOING TO WALK EVERYWHERE? WE'RE IN PHOENIX, PEOPLE. But we know, WE TRUST, we love, we follow, WE PURSUE THE JESUS CHRIST WHO HAS AUTHORITY OVER DEATH AND HE IS OURS. CHURCH, stop grieving like those who have no hope.
· Stop mourning like the professionals in this passage that are paid to spread fear in discourse. And start spreading the hope of the dynamic savior, Jesus Christ, who changes everything. And maybe you're here today and you don't trust that Jesus yet.
· And I'm already over my time, so I'm not going to give a long altar call. But I am going to challenge and convict you that stop coming to the things of this world that will never fill you, that will never give you hope, the money, the power, the influence, the lust, the list can go on and on and on. We pursue it. We come to it.
· But we need to be like Jarius, but we need to come to Christ. that even though I'm surrounded by death, surrounded by hardships, surrounded by problems that I cannot conquer, Jesus has done it. And he wants you to live in light of that truth. He wants to declare you to declare that he is Lord and that your death will not be the final word, but that you will spend eternity with him.
· In just a moment, we're going to witness that as people declare in an act of baptism that death does not have the final word, but Jesus does. And we get to live spreading that response to the world around us.
More from this series
Miracles of Jesus