Touching God
Mark 5:24 And a large crowd followed Him (Jesus) and was pressing in on Him. 5:25 Now there was a woman who had been suffering from an issue of blood for twelve years. 5:26 And having suffered a lot from many physicians and having spent all that she had and not having gotten any better but rather having got worse, 5:27 having heard about Jesus, and having come up behind him in the crowd, she touched His garment, 5:28 for she was saying, "If I but touch His clothes, I will be made well (Lit. be saved)." 5:29 And immediately her hemorrhage stopped; and she knew in her body that she was healed of her disease. 5:30 And immediately Jesus, recognizing in Himself that power had gone out from Him, turned about in the crowd and was saying, "Who touched my garments?" 5:31 And His disciples were saying to Him, "You see the crowd pressing in on You, and you say, 'Who touched me?'" 5:32 And He was looking all around to see who had done this. 5:33 But the woman, being afraid and trembling, knowing what had happened to her, came and fell down before Him and told Him the whole truth. 5:34 And He said to her, "Daughter, your faith has made you well (Lit. has saved you); go in peace, and be healed of your affliction." (Translation mine)
Have you ever needed to hear from God, and you needed to hear from Him now? I have, and it wasn’t a pretty picture. Waiting on God can be a very frustrating experience. I have never known God to be in a hurry. There was a time when Jeremiah the prophet was asked to get a word from God for some people who needed direction. (Jeremiah 42:1-7), and it was ten days before the Lord spoke to Jeremiah with the answer. There were times in my life when I felt like I was at the end of my rope only to find that the rope suddenly seemed to grow longer. Things hadn’t changed as much as I would have liked, but things didn’t seem as dire as they had been.
There is a story in the Bible about a woman who was sick. And she was at the end of her rope.
Her predicament Mark 5:24-26
It says that she had an issue of blood for twelve years. Twelve years is a long time to live with a health problem. Did she pray and ask God for relief? I am sure she did. But for twelve years it seems there was silence.
She did everything she knew how to get well. She spent everything that she had on doctors and only got worse.
This raises interesting questions about God’s will. God did not answer her prayers for healing, yet she didn’t conclude that it was God’s will for her to be sick. Otherwise, she would not have spent everything she had on doctors to help her.
She could have concluded that doctors were God’s chosen means for her to achieve her healing. We are often told that God expects us to do everything we can before we should expect Him to step in on our behalf. I’m not sure we can ever say that we have done everything we could, but this woman came as close to anyone we might ever meet. She spent all she had. She was broke.
We need to ask if the Bible is holding her up as an example for all of us to follow. If God truly expects us to do everything we can before we should expect Him to help us, then this woman should be someone we should emulate. Without jumping ahead of ourselves too much in this story, we can say that there is nothing in what follows that would suggest that this is the case. Actually it is probably the opposite.
I know a little about how this lady must have felt. I have had cancer, three strokes, and a heart attack. I haven’t had any treatment apart from some medicine to thin my blood out, but the cost of the tests alone were thousands and thousands of dollars. I am thankful that we had good medical insurance. But they didn’t have medical insurance in her day, but I wonder what people are expected to do today who don’t have any.
I have been told many times that God gave us doctors, and that this is His program for us today. Again let me say how thankful I am that we had good medical insurance. But if doctors are God’s program for all our health needs today, perhaps the Church needs to offer a group health insurance plan for all its members. But more to the point, would this not make Mark’s observation of this woman’s past medical treatment irrelevant if not distracting to our story? Should we excise his comments here so as not to mislead readers today as to how we should expect God to work in our lives? Should we add a footnote telling readers today not to pay attention to what happened to this woman prior to her coming to Jesus?
Her performance Mark 5:27-29
This woman heard about Jesus. We don’t know what it was that she heard about Him. But we do know that she expected that He would heal her. There was a man who came to Him earlier (Mark 1:40-42) who had leprosy. He told Jesus that if He was willing, He could make him clean. And Jesus said: “I am willing. Be clean.”
We can wonder if this man just happened to catch Jesus on a good day. When we read the Bible, we have to make a choice. Is the Bible simply a record of events that happened a long time ago, or is it a picture of what God is like, even now? If God is not like He is in the Bible, then we don’t know what He is like at all. But I thought that was the point of having a Bible.
It is often said that Jesus did some things, like healing, only to prove to people that He was the Messiah. I am not sure where it says that the Messiah would go around and heal people and that that would be the sign that they had found the right person. But why healing? Walking on water should be enough I would think. But it seems that Jesus wasn’t so eager to perform for people anyway. He did what He did, because that was who He was. In another context, it says that He saw a great multitude and was moved with compassion toward them, and He healed their sick. (Matthew 14:14) He wasn’t trying to prove anything to anybody. It was just the thing to do.
Jesus healed Peter’s mother-in-law by merely touching her hand (Mark 1:30f). The whole city gathered at their door, and many were healed. A paralyzed man was healed, and this does seem related to proving something about who He was (Mark 2:1ff). He told the man his sins were forgiven, and healing him should prove that He could do that. Telling someone he is healed is a lot harder than telling someone that he was forgiven. But there is no question that Jesus would have healed the man anyway, and this was the only time that Jesus made any reference to healing to prove to anyone that He could forgive sins.
Jesus healed a man on the Sabbath, just by telling the man to stretch forth his hand (Mark 3:5). His power seems unlimited, and He seems to have no qualms about healing anyone anywhere. Soon after crowds thronged him, many were healed, and people were falling over each other to touch Him (Mark 3:10).
Most recently there was a man with an unclean spirit which, when it was cast out by Jesus, caused a large herd of swine to run off a cliff into the sea. This Jesus can do anything, and He never turned anyone away who needed His help. So she believed that Jesus would do the same for her.
She saw the crowds. She knew she probably wouldn’t be able to get a private audience with Him. But there would be no need for that. Surely one who could heal like Jesus and who healed so freely, if she could just touch Him, that should be enough. She would be healed.
But there was a crowd. But this was a woman who was tired of being tired. No more. This Jesus can heal her, and she’s not going to go home without it. Move over, crowd. I am coming through.
And she pushed and jostled and cut in front of people. She said, “Excuse me,” to some, but to others she just took the opportunity to squeeze in front of them. She had one thing on her mind: touch this Jesus.
Jesus was walking, so she had to walk faster. She had to be out of breath. Loss of blood can do that to you. Plus fighting your way through a crowd. Just a few feet more. She probably reached through the last few people and extended her arm and touched His garment.
And then Jesus stopped.
No comments:
Post a Comment