The Gospel of Luke 8:40-56 A delayed instant resurrection

Okay, let's start with Luke 8.40, and as Jesus returned, the people welcomed Him, for they had all been waiting for Him. Now, remember what had happened previously here. Jesus had come across the Sea of Galilee with his disciples. He had previously cast the demons, plural, out of the man who was on the eastern shore of the Sea of Galilee. And he came back across. Apparently there was an expectation that he would be coming back to the same place. And so people were already waiting there for him. Likely, as we put in your handout, this is Magdala, the place that Nancy and Courtney and Ingrid and I visited shortly after arriving in the Galilee area. Though it's not certain, there's a fair likelihood that this place is Magdala.

It's the place Jesus and the disciples returned. It is a place that most certainly had a synagogue, which we'll see is a requirement here, a major port on the west shore of the Sea of Galilee. From there, Mark 6 reveals that Jesus would go to Nazareth, and the only major port on the west side other than this is Tiberias, and that's a place we have no record that Jesus or the disciples ever went. And Tiberias was largely a Roman and Greek, in other words, a pagan city, and the Jews pretty much stayed away from it.

So likely that we're talking about Magdala here, and this would be the view of it. This photograph, by the way, aerial photograph, was taken in 2004, and it's been since then that the excavations have been done at Magdala. So you have it on a map here. in your handout on the front page. And so Jesus had come across from the east shore of the Sea of Galilee. Like I say, what we circled and mentioned last week is that's where Courtney pulled off to put gas in the car. And then crossing over again to Magdala, which would be the western port and a logical place to go from there over to Nazareth.

Now, one of the things we point out, too, in Luke 7, 8, and 9, Dr. Luke observes, and again, it's an only situation, and so let's switch over to this slide, Luke 7, 12. Now, as he, Jesus, approached the gate of the city, a dead man was being carried out, the only son of his mother. Luke uniquely makes this observation of an only son or only daughter and here in today's passage we'll see a man named Jairus and he was an official of the synagogue he fell at Jesus feet began to implore him to come to his house and he had an only daughter about 12 years old and she was dying And then we'll see as we get into chapter 9, a man from the crowd shouted, saying, Teacher, I beg you to look at my son for he's my only boy. And uniquely in these three chapters, Dr. Luke makes note of personal details. And in each case, it's an only son or an only daughter here.

So what we find here is that people have been waiting for him on the other side. Jesus and his disciples have returned to the city and from the other side to the Sea of Galilee. People are expecting that Jesus will be returning there and they were eagerly anticipating his return. The whole city was kind of like standing on tippy toes looking for him. So why would they welcome him and wait for his return? Well, let's look at the reasons why they would be eager to have him coming back. One is amazing and unique teaching. He taught like no other.

Many of the rabbis would leave people in this sort of, some think this and some think that. And so the rabbinical tradition was to teach something and leave things in tension. And the way the story goes is like this. There were these groups of Jews that were having a discussion, and pretty soon it broke into two different groups that were arguing with each other. And arguing over what is the tradition? And so then they get into this big heated argument.

A rabbi walks in. And one group says, Rabbi, Rabbi, you've got to settle the situation for us here. Isn't this the tradition? And the Rabbi says, no, that's not the tradition. And so the other group says, ah, then it must be this is the tradition. And the Rabbi says, no, that's not the tradition. And at that, the two groups started arguing loudly. He said, that's the tradition. Right? OK.

So, amazing and unique teaching, he said, rather than leaving people with this rabbi has that opinion and this rabbi has this other opinion, he said, but I tell you, and he would state things with absolute statements and absolute truth, there would be immediate deliverance from demon possession, and we have no record of any situation, no matter how many demons or what the demon was, We have no record that Jesus ever failed to cast out a demon. Immediate healing from birth defects, disease, and injury. And in many cases, they had no other medical solution for these things. And that was just for starters, okay? Why else would they welcome him and wait for his return?

Well, you might have, as we read in the last chapter of Luke, Luke 7.15, the dead man sat up and began to speak. So you might have a resurrection. That would be another reason. But certainly you'd want to be around for that. And all of us, wouldn't we have some loved one we would love to be able to bring back for a little longer? Right? In addition to that, you might have some free food in the deal. Some free food. And so, you know, that's great. Free meals.

So here's Luke 8.41 and the first part of 42. 42 A, B, and C as we call it.

And there came a man named Jairus and he was an official of the synagogue and he fell at Jesus' feet and began to implore him to come to his house for he had an only daughter about 12 years old and she was dying. Now, Jairus, Dr. Luke tells us, was a synagogue official, and that meant that Jairus directed the program of who spoke, and what was read and said, and when, at the synagogue, likely in this city of Magdala. And this would be the remains, if that's in fact the place that we're talking about. It may well be that Jesus and Jairus had actually had previous contact with one another, and maybe even a number of times. And so here's Jairus in a particular situation of need, and he says, oh, Jesus can help me.

As a matter of fact, he's the only one who can help me. Jairus did not have synagogue issues in mind this time, though. It wasn't, you know, can you come speak here and can you read this passage and can you say these words instead? It was, I have a particular need and that's that my daughter is dying. My 12-year-old daughter, my only daughter is dying.

So here are the remains of the synagogue at Maqdala. And that would, if this is the case, and it likely is, that would be the synagogue that Jairus was in charge of. And this shore, There, at Magdala, would have been where Jesus would have come up on the shore, and where they would have seen the boat approaching from some distance. Here's a small part of the remains of the homes, and likely some of those homes that are visible were right there in the neighborhood. It would make sense that Jairus, if he was a synagogue official, would live right nearby. And so perhaps one of those homes right next to the synagogue would be one of them.

So it appears likely that Jairus had been anticipating Jesus' return and seeing the boat and holding Jesus and all his disciples coming, was waiting with angst for Jesus to come ashore. Now likely, here's how the scenario played out. The word Magdala means tower. The word Magdala means tower. And it was typical for towns and cities to have one or more watchtowers there.

And if someone was set at watch right there in Magdala, and Jairus might say, as soon as you see Jesus' boat coming, let me know right away. And so here's Jairus rushing up at the first word that Jesus was coming when he was still out in the Sea of Galilee but identifiable as that's him, right? So here he would come and get notice that the watchtower was there and available and So Jairus' one and only daughter, who was about 12 years of age, was dying, and Jesus coming would have been something that he had gotten notice of. In the culture of that time and place, Jairus' daughter was just about to come into the age of adulthood.

Now, to us, we'd say, well, at 12 years old, you've still got a ways to go. But in the culture of the time, that was the time when you were coming into adulthood. For guys, it would be a time of bar mitzvah. For gals, these days, they call it bat mitzvah. In the Roman Empire, a gal could be married off at 12 years of age. And to us, that's rather shocking. That is, however, the age in Uganda as well.

So when I go to visit there, that was one of the things to kind of mentally adjust to. So here is Jairus' daughter, who's just kind of at the brink of entering what the culture would consider adulthood, but he's going to lose her. He's going to lose her, at least that's what he's concerned about. So 842d, the very last part of 842, but as he went the crowds were pressing against him. So you can imagine, it shows in the picture here, they're back up against what's probably the synagogue.

The truth is that likely what would have been the case is the man in the watchtower would have seen the boat that Jesus is coming in with the disciples at a distance and he sent notice to Jairus Jesus is coming. He's going to come up on the shore soon. And so Jairus is running along with the rest of the people at the news that Jesus is coming. And Jairus is running up to Jesus when he gets off the boat. So Jesus and his disciples arrived on shore there. There was such anticipation of Jesus coming that a great many of the people had already crowded around him. when Jairus made his plea.

Jesus, won't you please come? My daughter is dying, my only daughter. So Jairus had already been to an anxious time waiting for Jesus to arrive while his daughter was dying. He wanted Jesus to get to the house as quickly as possible, but the crowds. You ever been in a crowd that's moving? Moving. Right?

In some kind of an ideal world, Jairus could recognize his daughter's condition early and give Jesus a call on his iPhone and ask him to heal his daughter from wherever he was. But that wasn't the technology of the day. After waiting anxiously for Jesus to arrive on shore, the crowd would now slow down Jesus' progress toward Jairus' house. But that was not going to be the only delay.

Luke 8.43-45, And a woman who had a hemorrhage for twelve years and could not be healed by anyone came up behind him and touched the fringe of his cloak. And immediately her hemorrhage stopped. And Jesus said, Who is the one who touched me?

And Jairus is thinking, No! I've been waiting for Jesus to come all this time, and now this happens! Alright. Jairus' faith was overt. Right there at the shore, please come, right? This woman's faith was covert. So Jairus had openly and publicly pleaded for Jesus to come heal his one and only daughter.

This woman with a flow of blood, however, was shy and came up carefully through the group and covert about her faith. And yet we're going to see that Jesus honored it nonetheless. As uncomfortable and disturbing as it was for this woman to have this continual flow of blood, that flow of blood kept her from attending the temple in Jerusalem.

It kept her in a constant state of ritual impurity. So the Jews had various Old Testament laws with regards to a woman's flow of blood. And after a birth, she had to go a certain number of days to the temple even. It's also a marriage problem. The constant flow of blood would keep a young woman from being betrothed and from being married as well, staying married. Her husband could not, according to the law of Moses, be intimate with her, or both of them risk being stoned to death. How about that? And the Jews would have looked upon her as cursed by God. She could not get married. She could not remain married. And she was continuously in the state of, I'm being forced into this, aside from all the other shames.

In Luke 8.46 it says, But Jesus said, Someone did touch me, for I was aware that power had gone out of me.

Alright, so here's Jesus bringing up someone touched me. He said, I was aware. Notice those words. This is one of those many times when it becomes apparent that though Jesus was and is fully deity, and fully man, he is not overwhelmed as we would likely be with the great numbers of people." Imagine you've got a big crowd thronging you, and you're trying to move through it, and everybody's up close against you, and everybody wants something. And Jesus says, somebody touched me. As a matter of fact, the disciples in another gospel brought up this point. Everybody is touching you. What are you talking about, right?

The take-home on this is that we come to realize God is not overwhelmed with the great numbers of people with whom He has to deal. You have His undivided attention. Isn't that amazing to ponder? It isn't like, you know, I've got a lot of people to see today, and so you've got about 1.5 seconds. It's not like that. God takes individual care and attention towards you.

In the same way that Jesus, in the midst of a crowd, knew that some one person touched Him. He can give you undivided attention. and not be distracted and not feel like, boy, I've got to move on because I've got other folks. I've got another question here.

Did this healing in which Jesus could tell that power went out of him reduce his total available power for healing and other miracles? No. This did not diminish his available power. So he could tell that power went out of him. That doesn't mean that all of a sudden the gauge on the tank went and dropped a half, right? It didn't diminish his available power.

Because God's power is infinite, just like his capacity to deal with us and have fellowship with us is infinite. God doesn't say, you know, I'd really like to have fellowship with you, but I can't right now. I'm kind of busy. He wants each of us to walk with Him and have fellowship with Him, and He will give us individual, undivided attention. There is no place, there is no point at which God gets maxed out. I've just had it for today. I'll talk to you tomorrow. God doesn't get maxed out like that.

The woman was trying to have a private healing. If I can just touch the edge of his garment, privately, covertly. Jesus, however, was going to make it public. Who touched me? He didn't ask, who touched me? Because he didn't know. He asked because he wanted to make this, what the woman had hoped would be private, a public healing. Since this woman had been dealing with the flow of blood for 12 years, Jesus made this a public healing so that her standing among the Jews would be cleared once and for all. Cleared once and for all.

She had been in a place where she could not be engaged to be married. She had been in a place where she could not remain married. She had been in a place where she could not go to the temple. She had been in a place where she really needed to just stay away from everybody because she was ritually unclean.

And now that that had ended and she was completely and immediately healed, he wanted to make this public. so that everyone would witness. This woman is okay. This woman's okay. She's been cleared. And you all need to know that. So Luke 8, 47 and 48 says, When the woman saw that she had not escaped notice, she came trembling and fell down before him, and declared in the presence of all the people the reason why she had touched him. and how she had been immediately healed. And he said to her, daughter, your faith has made you well. Go in peace.

One thing that we've made note of, and this is certainly a case in point, is that Jesus regarded women. Now that was in contrast to the other rabbis. The rabbis would be inclined to disregard women entirely. They would not teach them. Jesus did. They wouldn't allow them as witnesses, nor speak to them, obviously Jesus did, from everything we know about the culture. Jesus teaches women as well as men. Mary and Martha refer to Jesus, and Mary and Martha, Lazarus' brother, refer to Jesus as the teacher. He taught them. He considered them worthy of being taught.

God himself arranged that women were the first witnesses of both the empty tomb and of Christ resurrected. And one of the women, Mary Magdalene from Magdala, likely this very city, had seven demons cast out of her by Jesus. She was the first one to witness Christ as bodily resurrected. God arranged that. Jesus regarded women, and that was unique. Christ spoke to this woman graciously, very graciously.

So this woman, having realized that, oh, this is going to be public and I've got to get out with what happened, the woman speaks openly to everyone present about her enduring condition and immediate healing. I've been through this through 12 years. Between her 12 years of the flow of blood and the 12-year-old girl, this message is brought to you by the number 12. Right? Okay. This will make it openly known, many witnesses, that she is now ritually clean. No longer cursed. She's no longer untouchable, unmarriable, and uncomfortable. Okay? She's been cleared of all that.

Now, let's put ourselves at this point in Jairus' sandals. He's saying, oh, I was waiting for Jesus to come, and he finally got to the shore, and we've had crowds and delays. The crowd moves slowly. Everybody's pressed against him. He can't get very far very fast.

And then this woman. And Jesus has to go and take the time with this woman and talk to her. You can imagine Jairus' mindset. Well, we too can get into that frame of mind when God allows delays in our lives. Ever had that happen? How much longer until the next delay, right? But just like God had a purpose in the delays, with Jairus, he has a purpose for those with us as well.

Here's Luke 8.49, while he was still speaking, someone came from the house of the synagogue official saying, your daughter has died, do not trouble the teacher anymore.

So we should point out here, that the messenger said, your daughter has died, and he said it in the perfect tense. And the messenger thought, according to the Greek then, that the daughter's death was a completed past action, and not only that, the perfect tense also tells us that the death had ongoing results on into the future, implying permanence. She's dead, she's really, really dead, and she's going to stay dead. That was the messenger's choice of verbs here. The messenger viewed the death of Jairus' daughter as final and irreversible. She's permanently really dead. Now, so this messenger from the house of Jairus, who is the synagogue official, carried along the message that Jairus' daughter had died already and that he should not bother Jesus anymore. Don't bother him. The messenger, of course, assumed that Jesus was a teacher who had the power to heal someone who was sick, or at least this messenger believed that Jairus thought that. But a resurrection was not even in the messenger's mind. What can God do? What can God not do?

That's at issue here, isn't it? So Luke 8 50 when Jesus heard this he answered him to not be afraid any longer only believe and she will be made well What The messenger just said She's dead Finally permanently So Jairus here had a choice Jairus could either believe Jesus or he could believe the finality of his only daughter's death, as the messenger put it.

One or the other. He could say, Jesus, thanks for coming so far. I guess we won't need you. Or he could believe Jesus' words. And we have a choice before us as well. We can believe the people around us, our circumstances, our feelings. We can be afraid and anxious. Or we can believe the Lord.

Jesus said in John 14.1 to the disciples, Do not let your heart be troubled. Believe in God. Believe also in Me. So troubled heart or believe, one or the other. Pick one.

One of the points we make here at Holly Hills is that faith in the facts is like the train in the tracks, right? And like the caboose, the feelings follow. Well, I'm going to give a little more detail here. So the facts here are like the train in the tracks.

The facts are what God has revealed in his word. What does the Bible say? Those are the spiritual facts. Here we have faith, which is like the locomotive pulling the train along. We put our faith in what God has revealed, and that carries us forward. The caboose is the feelings. Now, this is actually an unusual teaching in Christianity these days.

Much of Christendom tells us to put our trust in feelings or hunches, Impulses. Circumstances. Others' opinions. Experiences. Or, name it and claim it. I'm going to believe God for, and then you fill in the blanks, when God has never even promised that. I'm going to claim it. So faith in the facts is like the trail in the tracks. And the feelings, the circumstances, hunches, all those other things are the caboose they follow.

Here's Luke 8.51.

When he came to the house, that is Jesus, he did not allow anyone to enter with him except Peter, John, and James. and the girl's father and mother. Interesting, he told the other nine disciples, you guys need to stay outside for this one. Peter, James, and John. And what we'll see is that this isn't the only circumstance in which Jesus picked specifically Peter, and James, and John. But just the three. And you think about why would he do that? One thing is, you don't need a big crowd of people coming in, right? You don't need a big crowd of people coming in.

If you had Peter and James and John, he'd fulfill the two or three witnesses requirement given in the Mosaic Law, and the girl's father and mother here. So six people entered, only those six, Jesus, Peter, James, John, Jairus, and his wife, the girl's mother. If there were any others, they were put out of the room. Peter and James and John were brought in as witnesses for later times. That is, two or three witnesses, right? And the father and mother were there to see their daughter raised and to give her care, because Jesus was about to tell them, you need to feed her.

So in Luke 8, 52 and 53, it says, Now they were all weeping and lamenting for her. But he said, Stop weeping, for she has not died, but is asleep. And now you see something very interesting. A whole bunch of mourners began laughing at him, knowing that she had died. So we have this question. Why is it that we have laughing mourners? These mourners were all outside.

They weren't inside the room. And this interaction took place just before the door was closed, or just before Jesus entered the room. In the New Testament times, if a person was well-off enough, they would actually hire mourners to mourn. Hire people to make more noise at morning. So the indication is from these, at least some of these mourners were hired mourners. Which is why they would easily switch from mourning to laughing. Isn't that an interesting thing? In the culture, you would hire people to make a greater mourning sound.

You can imagine being a professional mourner. That just would be a little hard to imagine. At any rate, this word, this laughing, actually means laughing in derision. It's not a laughing like that's funny, but laughing in derision at Jesus' statement.

Now both Christ and the Apostle Paul used the term asleep to refer to those who are going to be resurrected. Very interesting, rather consistent in its use. Jesus also said that Lazarus was asleep when he'd actually been dead up to four days. That's in John chapter 11.

The term asleep was used to get across the idea, even though it was an actual physical death, that it was a temporary condition. That's what it's conveying. It's a temporary condition. One of the things that I think is neat for me to be able to share is if I'm doing like a graveside service, I'll say, remember, what we're doing here, it's honorable, it's fitting, but it's only temporary. If this is a believer, it is only temporary. Here's Luke 8, 54 and 55.

He, however, took her by the hand and called, saying, Child, arise. And her spirit returned, and she got up immediately, and he gave orders for something to be given to her to eat. So Jesus did the unthinkable here. He actually invited people into the room.

It was traditional for even the mourners to stay out of the room, because the Jews, out of Numbers 19, were not to touch a dead body. That would make them unclean for seven days. They'd have to go back and do some particular rituals to get ritually clean. And so what he was doing by inviting these people into this room with the girl who had been dead, is all of them were now going to be ritually unclean. Jesus invited the other five to go not only into the room with the girl's dead body, but Jesus actually was going to touch her and lift her up by the hand.

He said, Child, arise. And Dr. Luke recorded that her spirit then returned to her body. That's a very interesting statement. This is the other half of the understanding that death is separation in the Bible. And death is the separation of the soul and spirit from the body. This girl is going to be made alive by that death being reversed. Her soul and spirit will be returned to her body.

So Jesus then gave orders to give her something to eat. Isn't that interesting that he would do that? I think there's a few different reasons why. It would certainly indicate that while she's eating, she must be alive. I mean, really alive, right? Not too often. Give the girl's parents a chance to show care for her. I mean, imagine at first they're just shocked. Here's their daughter who's now alive again, right? But it gives them, you know, some action to take to start showing care for her right away.

And then imagine if she had been sick for a while, it's possible that she hadn't eaten for a while. She was too sick to eat. And so by this time, she was probably quite hungry, right? And so several different reasons there for Jesus to say, give her something to eat, right?

Here's Luke 8.56, and her parents were amazed, well that's all I'll say, and he instructed them to tell no one what had happened. Now this might be one of the greatest understatements in the whole Gospel of Luke. Her parents were amazed. Would you be amazed? I think so.

Even though Jairus believed enough to listen to Jesus and follow his direction about the six of them going into the room with his daughter, Even though Jesus kept denying that the girl was actually dead, right up to the very last seconds, and even though Jairus had many anxious moments, the girl's parents were indeed amazed, both of them.

Why would Jesus say, don't tell anybody? Hey, by the way, If somebody resurrected your daughter, could you keep it quiet? What do you think about that? That'd be tough to do. So why would Jesus instruct the parents not to tell anybody what had happened? And it's because Jesus didn't need publicity by word of mouth. This wasn't a PR campaign. What did Jesus do this for?

This was not only care for Jairus and Jairus' family and this girl, but he did it so that people would understand who he was. He didn't need publicity, he needed people to recognize who he was. This only daughter, one and only, of Jairus and his wife was resurrected, and we need to make note of this, back to this life. Back to this life. She would die again. She was resurrected back to this life. It was in God's purpose that this girl died and was resurrected instead of being healed.

All the delays of the crowd, the delay of the woman who had the flow of blood and her healing and taking the time to talk to her was all on purpose. It was all on purpose. There are things for us in which we get to choose the timing and duration. You've probably made some of those kind of decisions yourself. Oh, I'm going to do this at this time. On this day, we're going to leave for vacation. We're going to do this and we're going to do that. There are also things in life in which we don't get to choose the timing at all. God does.

Ever noticed that? Boy, I wouldn't pick this timing. Ever have it happen that things happen either sooner or later than what we might prefer? Things happen sooner or later than what we might prefer? In some cases, things happen sooner than we like or maybe later.

And just like Jairus' daughter, his one and only daughter, becoming deathly ill, there are things you and I would never even sign up for in the first place, no matter what the timing, even if God brings things to a good end. Would Jairus have signed up for, hey, you know, I'd like to have my daughter get really, really deathly sick, and then have Jesus come and go through a slow, crowd and then get further delayed by this woman with the flow of blood only to be told that my daughter had died. Would you sign up for that? Jesus is going to resurrect her at the end, right?

You see, the truth is we all get in these kinds of situations where God picks the timing and things either happen too soon or they happen too late pretty often in life. Pretty often. But the truth is, God has His purpose in it, just like He had His purpose in what happened with Jairus' daughter. And one of the things for us to remember in this is the lesson out of Romans 8, 28-30.

And we know that God causes all things to work together for good. Does that mean everything's good? No. What's the good? That's the rest of this verse. To those who are called according to His purpose. For those whom He foreknew, He also predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son. That's the good. Some things that happen in life are not good at all. Some very bad things can happen, but the good is that we're conformed to the image of His Son. That's the good.

One of the key things to look at there, for believers in Christ, the things that happen in time are always for an eternal purpose. For believers, the things that happen in time are always for an eternal purpose. Good things, bad things, difficult things, things happening at the wrong time, too soon, too late, But for believers in Christ, the things that happen in time are always for His eternal purpose. They're not all good things. Some are definitely not good things.

But the good that God intends to come out of those things is that we're conformed to the image of His Son. And that's an eternal purpose. Let's pray. Father, we just thank you as we look at this, we see an example that fits with our own life. There are things we wouldn't sign up for that do in fact happen. There are things that seem to happen at the wrong time, too soon, too late, too slow, too fast. And we look at those things, Lord, and you have your purpose in all of it, every bit. And we thank you for that, even if we don't understand it at the time. We thank you in Jesus' name. Amen.