Authority Over Disease

0:00 · She had tried everything the world had to offer.

0:03 · She had paid everyone.

0:05 · And scripture tells us she was worse, she was not better.

0:08 · Some of you might know what that feels like.

0:09 · You've chased the doctors, you've chased the diets,

0:12 · you've chased the relationships, you've chased the paychecks,

0:15 · the therapists, the podcasts, the self-help books,

0:18 · and every single one of them took something from you,

0:22 · but did not give back what they promised.

0:25 · The world had nothing left to offer her.

0:34 · But we are glad that you are here.

0:36 · And if you, maybe this is your church family,

0:39 · and this has been the place you are part of,

0:40 · or maybe you're visiting for the first time,

0:43 · and I don't think it's ever an accident

0:44 · when we are in God's house, when we are doing God's work,

0:48 · and he is calling us to be closer to his voice.

0:51 · You see, today is an exciting day in Mother's Day.

0:54 · But also, Mother's Day is a complicated holiday,

0:58 · but there are a lot of emotions

0:59 · in a lot of different places that people come from

1:03 · when they approach this day.

1:06 · You see, there's a lot of moms in this room,

1:08 · there are a lot of moms that will be watching online,

1:11 · and those moms come from different sources.

1:14 · The mom to the moms that maybe are in this room

1:17 · that have children crawling over them,

1:19 · or maybe this is your one hour break

1:21 · from having a child crawl on you

1:22 · for the rest of the week,

1:24 · I want you to know that we see you.

1:27 · To the moms who maybe your kids have grown up,

1:30 · and they have left your house,

1:33 · that once you got to cuddle them,

1:34 · and those days are long gone

1:36 · because they are grown up and cuddling their necks,

1:39 · and maybe there's a little bit of,

1:40 · as you're rejoicing in grandchildren,

1:42 · maybe sometimes you miss those early years.

1:45 · So those moms, we see you.

1:48 · To those moms who maybe were never physical mothers,

1:53 · but spiritual mothers inside the church,

1:55 · and who have loved and impacted generations of kids

2:00 · that have come into your life, we see you.

2:04 · To maybe those moms whose windows have been shut prematurely,

2:10 · or that maybe motherhood isn't coming as quickly

2:13 · as you'd like, and you're hoping and wishing and praying

2:16 · that God would see something more, we see you.

2:21 · Or maybe today for the first time,

2:23 · you have lost your mom, or you're missing your mom,

2:28 · particularly more on this day,

2:30 · I want you to know we see you, we love you moms,

2:34 · and we are glad that you are here.

2:38 · Because here's the honest truth,

2:39 · as much joy as there is in this holiday,

2:43 · there is also a lot of hard emotions

2:46 · that come alongside of it.

2:49 · Maybe some of the moms walked in today,

2:51 · and you feel a little weary,

2:54 · that you are weary from caring people

2:57 · who can't carry themselves yet.

3:00 · You're weary from maybe a job

3:02 · that seems to take more than it gives.

3:05 · Maybe you're weary from a marriage

3:07 · that feels like it's running on fumes.

3:10 · Maybe you just walked in, and you're weary and tired.

3:16 · Some of you might be worn.

3:18 · You see, there's a difference between weary and worn.

3:20 · Weary is what happens at the end of a long week.

3:24 · Worn is what happens after a long season.

3:28 · And maybe you've been showing up,

3:30 · you've been holding it together,

3:32 · you've been keeping everyone fed and clothed

3:35 · and functioning, and somewhere along the way,

3:38 · something in you got thin, your patience got shorter,

3:42 · and you've just been worn down.

3:46 · And some of you, if we're being really honest this morning,

3:51 · are wounded.

3:52 · Maybe there's a hurt you're carrying

3:55 · that nobody at brunch is gonna ask you about today.

3:59 · Maybe it's physical, maybe it's relational,

4:03 · maybe it's a child that isn't speaking to you,

4:06 · maybe it's a loss that you've never really grieved out loud,

4:09 · maybe it's 12 years of something that doctors still can't fix.

4:16 · Well, I want you to know that you are all

4:19 · in really good company this morning.

4:22 · Because today, as we read from God's word

4:25 · in Matthew chapter nine, and here's just the sovereignty

4:30 · and the, you could say, irony of how God works

4:33 · is we message map our passages as a staff,

4:37 · and we mapped out, and we did not mark

4:40 · that it was Mother's Day as we chose this passage,

4:43 · and we chose a passage where a woman

4:44 · has been bleeding for 12 years,

4:46 · and I'm like, I'm gonna change the passage

4:49 · until I started studying it more

4:51 · and saw what God had in here.

4:54 · Because today, we're gonna be introduced

4:56 · in Matthew chapter nine, we're gonna be starting

4:58 · at verse 20 to a woman who was all three of these things.

5:04 · She was weary, she was worn,

5:07 · and she was wounded for 12 years.

5:12 · And what Jesus does for her in about 60 seconds

5:16 · is going to preach to every single one of us today.

5:22 · So if you have your Bibles,

5:23 · I encourage you to open to Matthew chapter nine.

5:26 · Starting at verse 20, you can follow along with us,

5:29 · and it says then this, just then,

5:32 · a woman who had suffered from bleeding for 12 years

5:35 · approached from behind and touched the end

5:38 · of his being Jesus's robe.

5:42 · For she said to herself, if I can just touch his robe,

5:46 · I'll be made well.

5:48 · Jesus turned and saw her,

5:51 · and he said, have courage, daughter,

5:55 · your faith has saved you.

5:58 · And the woman was made well from that moment.

6:04 · Dear Lord, I thank you this morning.

6:07 · God, I thank you for your word

6:09 · that you have put in here for a reason.

6:11 · God, I thank you for all who are on the room

6:13 · that as we hear your word read, as we explain

6:17 · and we understand the context of how it was written,

6:20 · Lord, that it just speak to us

6:23 · on this special Mother's Day.

6:26 · Lord, it just grip us on how it says

6:28 · about the women in our lives,

6:30 · but Lord, what it says about all of us

6:32 · and how we are to respond.

6:35 · Lord, just let your spirit rest in this room.

6:39 · God, move through the reading

6:42 · and the preaching of your word,

6:45 · and Lord, let this time just glorify you.

6:48 · God, we lift all this up in Jesus' name, amen.

6:53 · In Matthew chapter nine, verse 20 through 22,

6:56 · we see three verses.

6:58 · That's all Matthew gives us for this whole story,

7:01 · three verses, but they are wedged inside a bigger story.

7:05 · And we actually read this bigger story

7:07 · and studied it last week

7:08 · that this synagogue leader, Jarius, came to Jesus

7:12 · because his daughter had died.

7:13 · And as Jesus is on the way to go raise this little girl

7:17 · from the dead, which he did,

7:19 · all of a sudden this story interrupts that bigger one.

7:24 · And as he's walking through this crowd

7:26 · and Jesus pressed on every side,

7:29 · this woman who is unnamed, who is unclean,

7:34 · and who is unwell, she reaches out

7:37 · and grabs the hem of his garment.

7:41 · Mark and Luke, some of the other eyewitness

7:44 · and gospel accounts, they fill in a little more details

7:47 · about this story and we'll pull those in as we go.

7:50 · But here's the question that this passage is asking

7:53 · and the question that every weary, worn,

7:56 · and wounded woman and man in this room

7:59 · is asking this morning is how do we move

8:03 · from weary, worn, and wounded to well?

8:07 · You see, that's how this passage ends up in verse 22.

8:10 · It says she was made well.

8:12 · But how did this woman who was so hurt,

8:15 · who was so cast out, how did she all of a sudden

8:18 · get to this wellness that changed everything in her life?

8:24 · That's our question today.

8:26 · In this text gives us three moves,

8:28 · three things this woman did to get her to the feet of Jesus

8:32 · and three things we need to do

8:34 · if we're going to get there too.

8:36 · And the very first thing we see

8:37 · is we need to recognize the limitations of this world.

8:41 · We need to recognize the limitations of this world.

8:45 · Check out verse 20 again.

8:48 · As Matthew is starting this story and in this interruption,

8:52 · he says just then a woman who had suffered

8:55 · from bleeding for 12 years.

8:59 · Matthew at the start of this,

9:00 · he gives us kind of the headline of it.

9:03 · It's like the newspaper headline.

9:04 · Does anyone remember what newspapers are anymore?

9:07 · All right, we don't really have those anymore.

9:09 · It's funny, actually last night I had dinner with my parents

9:12 · and our family and all the grandkids

9:14 · and we were celebrating my mom for Mother's Day

9:17 · and she said, do you remember my first job?

9:20 · And I was like, I wasn't alive, mom, all right?

9:23 · She's like, well, I told you, do you remember?

9:24 · Do you remember what I said?

9:25 · I was like, I don't.

9:26 · She said, I was a newspaper girl.

9:29 · And then my kids were like, huh?

9:31 · Like, right?

9:31 · They're like, it was a newspaper.

9:33 · But this is the headline of it,

9:35 · is woman suffers from bleeding for 12 years.

9:40 · But Mark gives us the story behind the headline.

9:44 · If you flip over to Mark chapter five, verse 25,

9:47 · we're gonna flip back and forth

9:48 · between these two passages

9:50 · and we'll also show these on the screen as we go.

9:53 · In Matthew 5.25, he gives a little more context.

9:57 · He says, now a woman was suffering

9:59 · from bleeding for 12 years.

10:01 · She had endured much under many doctors.

10:05 · She had spent everything she had

10:07 · and was not helped at all.

10:11 · On the contrary, she became worse.

10:15 · Mark doesn't hold any punches.

10:17 · Mark doesn't like dress up the story a little bit.

10:21 · We get the Reader's Digest version from Matthew,

10:23 · but Mark is like, hey, peel back the layers.

10:26 · This was a horrible situation

10:28 · that she had tried everything

10:31 · and it didn't work.

10:32 · Now let's think a little bit more

10:34 · and let this land for a second.

10:37 · It says 12 years.

10:40 · If you started bleeding in 2014,

10:43 · you would still be bleeding this morning.

10:46 · 12 years.

10:49 · 12 years of appointments.

10:51 · 12 years of specialists.

10:53 · 12 years of draining her savings

10:56 · and her hope at the same time.

10:58 · And Mark says that she had endured much

11:01 · under many doctors.

11:03 · This is Mark's polite way of saying

11:05 · that the cure had become worse than the disease.

11:10 · My wife and I, full disclosure,

11:12 · and if you work in the medical field,

11:14 · this is not a reflection on you.

11:15 · It is more a reflection of hospitals

11:17 · and insurance companies in general.

11:18 · But we hate hospitals, okay?

11:20 · I don't think anyone like hospitals.

11:22 · Even like nurses and doctors

11:23 · probably don't like hospitals at this point.

11:24 · But we hate them, all right?

11:26 · And we got four kids and we hate them so much

11:28 · that we had the last kid at home in a tub, all right?

11:32 · It's actually because she wanted a hippie home birth

11:33 · and it was the last kid, so I was like, whatever.

11:37 · It was actually delightful.

11:40 · I'm not doing it again

11:41 · and I've witnessed more births than I ever want to

11:44 · and will never witness another one, that's what I said.

11:47 · But there's so much we want to avoid hospitals

11:49 · that like my arm could be falling off

11:51 · and I'd be like, let's give it a day.

11:54 · I think I can, it might heal itself, all right?

11:56 · Let's just pray about it.

11:57 · As long as we don't have to go to urgent care

11:59 · or the hospital.

12:00 · Like I don't want that bill that comes after that, all right?

12:03 · But as much as we dislike hospitals,

12:06 · I put my feet in the shoes of this woman

12:10 · who she was in first century Rome.

12:14 · First century Roman medicine was a nightmare.

12:18 · We're talking about they used ashes

12:20 · that they would put in the womb.

12:22 · They used animal dung to cover your body with.

12:26 · They had, at some ways, they would take a kernel of barley

12:30 · and they would stick it in your ear.

12:32 · Maybe your grandma still did that to you when you were a kid

12:34 · because they're like, hey, something's gotta happen there.

12:36 · She had tried everything the world had to offer.

12:40 · She had paid everyone.

12:43 · And scripture tells us she was worse, she was not better.

12:46 · Some of you might know what that feels like.

12:49 · You've chased the doctors, you've chased the diets,

12:52 · you've chased the relationships, you've chased the paychecks,

12:54 · the therapists, the podcasts, the self-help books,

12:58 · and every single one of them took something from you

13:02 · but did not give back what they promised.

13:05 · And here's what was also so true

13:07 · about this woman in this time.

13:09 · According to Leviticus 15, not only was she in pain,

13:13 · was she suffering, but her condition

13:15 · made her ceremonially unclean.

13:18 · That meant that she couldn't go into the temple.

13:21 · That meant that she couldn't worship with God's people.

13:23 · Anything she touched became unclean because she touched it.

13:28 · And anyone she touched became unclean.

13:32 · There's a good chance if she was married before

13:34 · that her marriage had ended.

13:36 · There's a good chance that she never had children.

13:39 · She had lived 12 years outside the walls of everything

13:43 · that made her a full member of her community.

13:47 · The world had nothing left to offer her.

13:53 · And you see, this is the first thing,

13:56 · the first move that the text requires of us

14:00 · is before you can reach for Jesus,

14:02 · you have to recognize that the world

14:04 · has run out of answers for you.

14:06 · As long as you think that one more appointment

14:09 · or one more relationship, one more pay raise,

14:12 · one more parenting technique is going to fix what is broken,

14:16 · you will not reach for him.

14:18 · You can't move toward Jesus

14:20 · until you stop moving towards the worlds.

14:24 · You see, I think we see this all the time in our worlds,

14:28 · that a lot of times people don't think they need Jesus

14:30 · because they are pacifying and they are numbing themselves

14:34 · by moving towards the world.

14:35 · But if you almost think of this from a visual standpoint,

14:38 · if Jesus is that way, the world is that way,

14:41 · and we keep inching closer to the world,

14:43 · and we realize we're like, why can't I get closer to Jesus?

14:46 · It's because we're moving in the wrong direction.

14:49 · And often time, we need people to break,

14:52 · to get to their lowest point,

14:53 · to realize that everything the world that offers us

14:56 · is just fool's gold until we see

14:58 · our need for something greater.

15:01 · You see, this woman had reached rock bottom.

15:04 · She had tried everything that the world had given to.

15:07 · She recognized the limitations of our world,

15:11 · and this allowed her then to then move

15:13 · to the second stage of this passage,

15:15 · is she reached for the savior of this world.

15:20 · Here's a second move we need to make in our lives,

15:22 · is we need to reach for the savior of this world.

15:25 · Check back into Matthew,

15:27 · and we pick up in the second half of verse 20,

15:30 · it says after she had suffered from bleeding for 12 years,

15:33 · it said she approached from behind,

15:37 · and she touched the end of his robe,

15:40 · for she said to herself,

15:41 · if I can just touch his robe, I'll be made well.

15:48 · Now, there's so much happening

15:49 · in just this one sentence that we see here,

15:52 · and I want us to unpack it for a second.

15:55 · First, it tells us that she approached from behind.

15:58 · Now, the reason for this is she is trying not to be seen.

16:02 · Remember what we said under the old law

16:05 · in the old covenant,

16:07 · and under what we see from the laws

16:09 · in Numbers and Leviticus, is she is unclean.

16:12 · By the Jewish law, she's not even supposed

16:14 · to be in this crowd.

16:16 · If anyone around her knew her condition,

16:19 · she would be publicly shamed, and she would be outcast.

16:22 · So she sneaks up from behind.

16:26 · And then the second thing she does

16:27 · as she is approaching from behind,

16:28 · is she is being very sneaky.

16:30 · I don't know if you're good at being sneaky.

16:31 · I'm not good at being sneaky.

16:32 · My kids think they're sneaky, but they're not, right?

16:35 · But sometimes they're like,

16:36 · they're sneaky when they don't wanna be.

16:38 · Like in the middle, or like the morning,

16:40 · at like five a.m., when they just come to your bed,

16:42 · and then you open your eyes, and you're like, ah!

16:43 · And they're just right there.

16:45 · And she's like approaching really quietly.

16:49 · And then here's the second thing it tells us,

16:51 · is she touched the end of his robe.

16:54 · The Greek word here is kraspedon for the end of his robe.

16:59 · It is the word for tassel.

17:01 · And you see every Jewish man wore tassels

17:04 · on the corners of his outer garment.

17:06 · Numbers 15, 37 through 41 tells us why,

17:09 · is because God commanded Israel to wear tassels

17:12 · as a reminder, a reminder to look at them.

17:16 · And when they looked at those tassels,

17:17 · they would remember the commandment in the word of God.

17:22 · So you see this tassel that was on Jesus' robe

17:24 · was a visual representation of the word of God,

17:28 · was a visual representation of the Bible.

17:31 · So here's this unclean woman who is reaching for the tassel,

17:35 · the symbol of God's word, and get this,

17:38 · on the garment of the living word of God.

17:42 · Now she didn't have all this in mind,

17:44 · but John 1 will later tell us

17:46 · that Jesus is the word made flesh,

17:49 · that she doesn't know all of this theology,

17:51 · but her hand reaches for the right thing.

17:56 · This past weekend, I went up to Lost Canyon,

18:00 · and it was surrounded by 400 dudes

18:03 · from around Southern Baptist Churches

18:05 · in the state of Arizona for a men's retreat

18:07 · that we do every year with all these churches

18:09 · that gather together.

18:10 · And it was a great time.

18:12 · I only stayed one night,

18:13 · because I came back here to preach,

18:15 · and in that one night felt like 10 nights,

18:17 · because all the men in there snored so loud,

18:22 · I put in my AirPods in blazed white noise,

18:25 · all right, just so I could sleep.

18:28 · And then at one point, they died,

18:29 · so then I had to plug them back in and charge them,

18:31 · so then I was doing one ear at a time, all right,

18:33 · like shoving the pillow in like white noise.

18:36 · But it was great to hang out with some of our guys

18:38 · from our church, but then also the pastor there,

18:41 · the speaker, it was a friend of mine, Jeremiah,

18:43 · who has a church in North Phoenix, City View,

18:46 · and one of the things he said that just stuck with me,

18:50 · he says, we always like come to church,

18:52 · and we hear and we're convicted,

18:53 · and we hear about things that should change in our lives,

18:56 · and then we leave and be like,

18:57 · I'm gonna stop that addiction,

18:58 · or I'm gonna start reading my Bible,

19:00 · I'm gonna start praying, and you're like,

19:02 · I'm gonna just will it, I'm gonna have the discipline

19:04 · to do it, and then you get about three days in,

19:07 · and you quit, and he's like, why is that?

19:10 · And he said, one of the reasons

19:11 · is because we don't know God's word,

19:14 · we don't memorize God's word,

19:15 · as God's word does not return void,

19:17 · so when we start quoting scripture,

19:20 · when we start knowing what is in our Bible,

19:22 · it is the power, the strength to push us through,

19:26 · and what I love that we see this representation

19:29 · here in this passage is this woman knew

19:31 · she didn't have the answers, but what does she do?

19:33 · She literally is reaching for the word of God

19:36 · on the living word of God in Jesus himself.

19:41 · And for us, so often, we just need to reach

19:45 · for the word of God despite us not having all the answers.

19:49 · We see this woman, she approached from behind,

19:51 · she reaches for Jesus, but the third thing

19:54 · I think we need to see in this passage

19:56 · is notice what she says to herself.

19:59 · She says, if I can just touch his robe, I'll be made well.

20:05 · Commentators note here that her theology

20:08 · might have been a little wobbly,

20:10 · she may have been a little superstitious,

20:12 · she may have been thinking that there was something

20:14 · magical in that tassel, but here's the line that gets me,

20:19 · and when I think about this in praying of this passage

20:21 · is her theology may be weak,

20:24 · but her faith was strong in that moment.

20:27 · And listen, I am so encouraged by that

20:30 · because some of you in this room right now are like,

20:32 · pastor, I'm not sure I know enough about Jesus.

20:35 · We just sang a song that says you are enough,

20:39 · your love is enough, your pursuit of us enough,

20:42 · and sometimes you're like, I don't know

20:43 · if I have a strong enough basis,

20:45 · I don't know if my faith is strong enough,

20:46 · and the truth is it's not.

20:49 · You don't have perfect theology,

20:51 · we never will on this side of heaven,

20:54 · is you are not gonna have the answer

20:55 · to every single question in your mind

20:57 · that pops up in the middle of the night

21:00 · that keeps you and your brain moving,

21:02 · but sometimes you just have to reach.

21:06 · Next Sunday, I'm excited about this,

21:08 · is our Baptism Sunday as we announced,

21:10 · and we've been doing this throughout the year,

21:11 · and here's what's crazy,

21:13 · it is through, from January through right now,

21:15 · we have baptized 46 people just here

21:18 · at Cross Church Surprise, all right?

21:23 · It is crazy.

21:25 · My preaching hasn't gotten better, all right?

21:27 · Just the Holy Spirit has gripped

21:29 · and just moved in that time, and it's been awesome,

21:31 · and we're baptizing, I think, already like seven

21:33 · and whatever, but here's what I love

21:35 · when we have baptisms,

21:36 · is it is people who are declaring exactly that,

21:39 · that they don't have every answer figured out,

21:42 · that they don't have a full theology,

21:44 · that this isn't like a wanna

21:45 · that we make them quote all of scripture

21:47 · before they can get in the tank,

21:48 · but they know enough that I wanna start this journey,

21:51 · Jesus is my Savior, I am reaching for him,

21:55 · and we are going to walk hand in hand

21:57 · down this path to getting closer to him,

22:01 · and we see the beauty of this passage,

22:04 · she didn't have all the answers,

22:06 · but she reached for the one who did,

22:09 · and here's what Mark says happens next,

22:12 · in Mark chapter five, verse 29,

22:14 · she reached for that and she touches his robe,

22:18 · and it says instantly, her flow of blood seized,

22:23 · and she sensed in her body that she was healed

22:26 · of her affliction, instantly, 12 years of pain, gone,

22:34 · in a split second, her fingertip brushed the edge

22:37 · of her robe, and here's what I want you to see,

22:39 · she had been running to everything else for 12 years,

22:43 · and none of it worked, but the moment she stopped running

22:47 · to the world, and instead, the moment she reached

22:50 · for Jesus, her healing came,

22:54 · and I think for us, is we need to stop reaching

22:56 · for what can't save us, we reach for the one who can,

23:00 · and here's where it transitions

23:02 · into this last movement of this power,

23:04 · she recognizes that the world does not have the answers,

23:07 · she reaches for the one who does have the answers,

23:09 · and this is what it calls us to do today,

23:12 · is you must receive the power that is not of this world,

23:16 · to receive the power that is not of this world,

23:20 · Matthew chapter nine, verse 22, it says Jesus turned,

23:26 · and he saw her, and he says, have courage, daughter,

23:31 · your faith has saved you, Mark's account is a little richer

23:37 · and even more detailed in this, and Mark chapter five,

23:41 · verse 30, it says Jesus immediately knew

23:43 · that power had gone out from him,

23:45 · that's just like a crazy, there's a lot of theology

23:48 · to unpack there, we don't have time for that, all right,

23:50 · that's a whole different sermon,

23:51 · but it's just like, what did that look like,

23:53 · Jesus is a superhero, so it's awesome,

23:55 · but it's like, they're just crazy scene,

23:57 · but he could feel that power had gone out from him,

24:00 · and he stopped in the middle of the crowd,

24:02 · and he turned around and he said, who touched my clothes?

24:05 · And the disciples look at him and they're like,

24:07 · dude, he's lost his mind, we're gonna go raise

24:09 · a dead girl that, and the disciples are probably thinking,

24:11 · that's not gonna work, this guy's asked us

24:13 · to raise a dead person, and we haven't done this yet,

24:15 · like Lazarus will come later, but like,

24:17 · we haven't raised from the dead and seen Jesus do that,

24:19 · and it's crazy, and then he's like,

24:20 · but we're being swarmed by people,

24:23 · it's like they're in a mosh pit right now,

24:24 · and it's just swaying as they're going down the street,

24:27 · you can barely get by, and Jesus is like, who touched me?

24:30 · And like, dude, everyone is touching you right now,

24:33 · but he's like, no, no, no, this touch was different,

24:37 · he's like, this touch, he knew the difference

24:39 · between the crowd that was just brushing past him

24:43 · and the one desperate woman who had reached for him

24:47 · in faith, and there's a difference here

24:51 · that we need to understand, is there's a difference

24:53 · between being near to Jesus and reaching for Jesus.

24:58 · I think one of the tragedies of what we see

25:02 · in the American church is we have a lot of people

25:04 · in chairs and pews throughout our country

25:07 · who are near Jesus, but maybe they've been near Jesus

25:11 · for 30 years and they've never actually reached out to him.

25:16 · There's a difference between sitting in a service,

25:19 · hearing some songs, listening to a dude talk on stage,

25:23 · bow or closing your eyes while everyone else is praying

25:25 · and just letting the routine happen,

25:28 · is people can do that, it can become cultural,

25:30 · it can become tradition, it can become white noise,

25:34 · but there is a difference when it becomes personal,

25:37 · and instead of just being near Jesus

25:39 · and hearing people around us talk about him

25:41 · that we actually reach for him

25:43 · and our lives change because of it.

25:48 · And Mark tells us here, he says when she does this,

25:51 · when she finds out that Jesus asked this question,

25:54 · she falls down before him, she is trembling with fear

25:57 · and she tells him the whole truth of her life.

26:00 · Every part of her 12 year story,

26:02 · she lays in front of him and everyone else that is there,

26:05 · and right here is the moment, this is the moment

26:08 · the whole story has been pointing to,

26:10 · Jesus looks at this unclean, this untouchable,

26:14 · this unnamed woman and he says one word

26:17 · that changes everything, in Mark chapter five, verse 34,

26:20 · he says this as she is crying, as she is weeping,

26:23 · her physical needs have been made clean,

26:25 · but now she's like, I messed up, I did something,

26:29 · and here's the word Jesus says right in our Bibles,

26:31 · is he says, daughter.

26:35 · He calls her daughter.

26:38 · Now this is not Jesus just being a nice Baptist

26:42 · and saying brother or sister or daughter or son

26:44 · because he doesn't know her name, he knows her name,

26:47 · but he calls her daughter.

26:51 · Now here's what's crazy about this,

26:52 · is this is the only recorded time in all the gospels

26:57 · that Jesus ever calls anyone daughter.

27:01 · He will go on and just after this,

27:03 · he will call Jarius his daughter, little girl.

27:07 · He has called his disciples friends,

27:09 · but no woman in any of the four gospels

27:11 · is ever called daughter by Jesus except this one woman.

27:16 · She came in as an outcast

27:19 · and she walks out of this encounter as family.

27:23 · And here's what just happened here,

27:25 · this is the deep theology of this miracle,

27:28 · is under the Old Testament law as we said,

27:31 · is if she touched Jesus, technically,

27:33 · he would become unclean, but when she touches him,

27:36 · he doesn't become unclean, instead his cleanliness

27:40 · flows to her uncleanliness and makes her clean.

27:44 · As her impurity when she touches him

27:46 · should make him impure, instead his purity

27:49 · takes her impurity and makes it pure.

27:52 · Everything changes when she touches Jesus

27:55 · and this church is exactly what the gospel is summed up in.

27:59 · This is what the cross does for us

28:02 · in 2 Corinthians 521, it says he made the one

28:05 · who did not know sin to be sin for us

28:08 · so that in him we might become the righteousness of God

28:13 · that Jesus took on our sin, he took on our failures,

28:16 · he took on our struggles, he carried on the cross,

28:19 · he died in our place but he raised again

28:21 · so that instead of it, our sin infecting him,

28:25 · all of a sudden his grace and love and purity

28:28 · changes our sin and forgives us for all of eternity.

28:33 · You see the cross is the ultimate version

28:36 · of what happens in this text,

28:38 · that Jesus takes all that mess, that uncleanliness,

28:42 · he cleans it and he gives it back

28:44 · in something so much greater, her bleeding stops

28:47 · so that one day his bleeding could start

28:49 · on a cross for her, for you and for me.

28:54 · But here's what's awesome about this,

28:56 · is it doesn't just stop at the miracle,

28:59 · he didn't just heal her body

29:01 · but he adopted her into his family.

29:04 · He'd go back to Matthew and Matthew 9 verse 22,

29:09 · the very end of this verse it says,

29:11 · in the woman was made well from that moment.

29:15 · Mark's gospel says, daughter, your faith has saved you,

29:19 · go in peace and here's what is beautiful about all this

29:23 · and here's what all this leads into,

29:25 · the beauty of this passage and what it teaches us today

29:29 · is we ask of how do we go from weary and worn and wounded

29:34 · to well has Jesus made this woman,

29:38 · it's Jesus, this is this miraculous truth

29:41 · we see in this passage is he makes us well

29:44 · by giving us hope, by giving us healing

29:48 · and giving us a home.

29:50 · See how she did this in this passage,

29:52 · she gave hope that no one else could give.

29:54 · She had spent 12 years with no hope,

29:57 · then she reached for Jesus and he says,

29:59 · have courage daughter, literally you could translate that

30:02 · as take heart daughter and that became her new reality.

30:07 · No longer was she searching for the next doctor

30:09 · to give her a glimmer of hope,

30:10 · all of a sudden she had the one who could give hope now

30:13 · and for all of eternity.

30:15 · But she didn't just get hope, she got healing.

30:17 · This was not just a physical healing,

30:19 · I love the Greek word translated of well

30:22 · in this passage is sozo and it's the same word

30:26 · used throughout the New Testament

30:27 · to say that someone is saved.

30:31 · Jesus didn't just stop her bleeding, he saved her soul.

30:34 · He gave her a healing and her soul

30:36 · that nothing else could give

30:39 · but ultimately he gave her a home.

30:41 · He called her daughter, she walked into that crowd

30:45 · and outcast, she walked out of that crowd,

30:48 · a member of God's family, all of a sudden she had a home.

30:54 · Hope, healing, a home,

30:59 · that's how Jesus moves us from weary, worn

31:03 · and wounded to well.

31:08 · And here's the deal, on this Mother's Day morning,

31:14 · I want every woman in this room to hear this.

31:20 · That Jesus sees you.

31:24 · He sees you more than your kids do.

31:28 · He sees you way more than your husband does.

31:30 · We are so stupid.

31:33 · Amen, that should be the best amen of the day.

31:39 · Jesus sees you greater than anyone else in this world.

31:46 · He knows your hurt, He knows your 12 years

31:51 · of struggle and suffering.

31:55 · And He sees you so much that Jesus will stop the crowd

32:00 · for you and when you reach for Him, even with trembling,

32:08 · even with weak theology in the moment,

32:11 · even from the back of the crowd

32:12 · so no one notices you, He will turn around

32:20 · and He will simply call you by your name, daughter.

32:28 · If you're a believer this morning,

32:32 · this calls us to stop living like a stranger

32:36 · in your own family, your church family.

32:41 · Some of us has been Christians for years,

32:44 · but we still approach Jesus like we're sneaking up

32:47 · from behind hoping He won't notice, sneaking in at night,

32:50 · hoping He won't notice the sin we just committed.

32:52 · He sees it, He knows it, and yet He chooses

32:57 · to keep forgiving, to keep loving despite our failures.

33:03 · Church, He already knows your name.

33:05 · He's already called you son or daughter.

33:08 · We need to live like it.

33:11 · We need to stop settling for a lie of

33:14 · if I can just get this in life, I'll be okay

33:18 · and start living in the reality of He called me His own.

33:24 · And maybe if you're here this morning

33:27 · and you've never trusted Jesus,

33:29 · maybe you are just like the woman in this story.

33:34 · Maybe you've been weary and worn and wounded

33:39 · for 12, maybe 20, maybe in 40 years and it's exhausting.

33:47 · Maybe you've tried everything the world has to offer

33:50 · and you are worse, not better.

33:54 · You need to hear this, that the same Jesus

33:59 · who stopped a crowd to turn around

34:03 · and call this woman daughter,

34:05 · He will stop the crowd for you this morning.

34:11 · You don't need a perfect faith.

34:15 · You need a real faith, a genuine faith.

34:19 · And I encourage you to reach for Him today.

34:24 · And here's what this leads for all of us.

34:30 · As we've fallen into the trap

34:33 · of trying to find our identity,

34:37 · trying to find our community,

34:40 · trying to find our purpose

34:43 · from a world that just can't give it to us.

34:47 · No matter how many friends or followers

34:49 · you have on social media,

34:51 · it's meaningless if you don't have a real community.

34:56 · And how many play dates you take your kids on

34:58 · that get all their energy out.

35:00 · If it doesn't go deeper where people see you

35:03 · and love you and walk with you, it's meaningless.

35:08 · It's just passing the time.

35:11 · No matter how many community groups you're in

35:13 · in Sun City, Grand or West, you're playing pickleball,

35:15 · you're playing golf, you're playing softball

35:17 · and you're doing something else on this side.

35:19 · No matter how much of that,

35:20 · if Christ is not at the center

35:22 · and people are walking hand in hand,

35:24 · there is a hole for what you need.

35:29 · And the challenge of this passage

35:33 · is for us to stop trying to find the answers,

35:37 · stop trying to find a community in a world that casts us out

35:43 · and to find it right here in this church family

35:48 · that is united by Jesus Christ,

35:52 · who he is our foundation, who he is our sustenance,

35:55 · who he makes us honest, he makes us humble,

35:58 · he makes us walk through this life broken as we are,

36:02 · locking arms knowing our hope is in him

36:05 · and not in the world around us.

36:09 · So here's what I want you to do this summer.

36:13 · Is that as it gets hot, as you start to ghost,

36:18 · as you start to go in and out of town

36:20 · because it's Phoenix and 115 degrees,

36:23 · so you're getting out of here as much as you can,

36:26 · don't do that at the expense

36:30 · of forsaking a community around you.

36:34 · Stop coming to a place and being near to Jesus,

36:37 · but not reaching for him and reaching for him,

36:39 · locking arms with one another.

36:41 · We are brothers and sisters in this room

36:43 · when we declare Jesus Christ

36:45 · and we need to start living like that family

36:49 · who has been saved by the savior of the universe

36:54 · and it changes everything for us.

36:59 · And we need to start acting like we have a friend in Jesus,

37:03 · but we also have friends in this church

37:06 · that we do life with, that we lean on,

37:11 · who not only Jesus can see us,

37:13 · but the community around us sees us

37:17 · because just as that woman once was an outcast,

37:21 · Jesus changed everything for her when he brought her in

37:25 · and he gave her a family, he gave her a purpose,

37:29 · and he gave her a home that she could be a part of.

37:36 · We wanna be your home.

37:39 · We're extending our hands.

37:41 · Jesus has extended his.

37:44 · Will you grab it and come home?