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Christ Community Chapel is a church in Hudson, OH, that invites people to reimagine life because of Jesus. Learn more about us at ccchapel.com.
Luke eight 4356.
Now when Jesus returned,
the crowd welcomed them, for
they were all waiting for him.
And there came a man named Jairus,
who was a ruler of the synagogue,
and falling at Jesus feet.
He implored him to come to his house,
for he had an only daughter
about 12 years of age, and she was dying.
As Jesus went.
The people pressed around him,
and there was a woman who had had a
discharge of blood for 12 years,
and though she had spent all of her
living on physicians,
she could not be healed by anyone.
She came up behind him
and touched the fringe of his garment,
and immediately
her discharge of blood ceased.
And Jesus said, who was it
that touched me when all denied it?
Peter said, master, the crowd surround
you and are pressing in on you.
But Jesus said,
someone touched me, for I perceive
that power has gone out from me.
And when the woman saw that
she was not hidden,
she came trembling and falling down
before him, declared, in the presence
of all people 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.
While he was still speaking,
someone from the ruler's
house came and said,
your daughter is dead.
Do not trouble the teacher any more.
But Jesus, on hearing this, answered him,
do not fear, only believe,
and she will be well.
And when he came to the house,
he allowed no one to enter with him,
except Peter and John, and James,
and the father and mother of the child,
and all were weeping and mourning for her.
But he said, do not weep.
For she is not dead but sleeping.
And they laughed at him,
knowing that she was dead,
but taking her by the hand,
he called, saying, child, arise.
And her spirit returned,
and she got up at once,
and he directed
that something should be given her to eat.
And her parents were amazed.
But he charged them to tell
no one what had happened.
It's the space between
difficult and something greater
that we're talking about this weekend.
The space between a cancer diagnosis
and the words stage for the space
between your spouse saying,
we need to go to counseling,
and I'm leaving
the space between an addiction
and an overdose.
Life comes with a certain amount
of difficulty, a certain amount of pain.
We get that we
we accept that we're okay with that.
But there's a level to that.
There's a level where difficult becomes
something worse,
maybe even something impossible.
Something that we know we can't deal with.
We can't overcome.
And the tricky thing about impossible
is it's in that moment
we tend to reach for God.
Which is why it's particularly painful
in that moment of impossibility
when we reach for
God and he doesn't answer.
He doesn't come through.
He hasn't helped.
In a sermon series, we're calling
Jesus the Redeemer.
Looking at ten stories in the Gospel
of Luke of how Jesus sets us free.
It might be this that
Jesus most needs to set us
free from,
because most of us have a story like this.
Not a difficult moment.
Not a painful moment.
An impossible one.
One where we reached out to God.
One where he didn't come through.
In fact, for many of us,
we know someone. You.
You might even be that someone for whom
that experience was the breaking point.
And that was where you left your faith.
You gave up on the idea
that there is a god or.
Or maybe that there is a God who loves you
because of that impossible moment.
Jesus came to set us free
from that impossibility, to reinterpret
our understanding
of those impossible moments.
That's what we're looking at this weekend.
So if you have a Bible, would you take it
out and open it to Luke chapter eight?
We're going to begin in verse 40
and go through the rest of the chapter.
Use your phone, your tablet,
however you want to get to Luke eight.
And by the way, if you're here
this weekend, you didn't bring a Bible.
Maybe you're not super familiar
with the Bible.
So glad that you're here, especially
knowing that if it's been a while,
it could be that this impossible
kind of moment is what has kept you away.
So I want you to know
this weekend is for you.
It's for you
as much as it is for anybody else.
So if you want to follow
along in the Bible,
there's one in the pew in front of you,
in the back of the room in East Hall.
And I preach from that Bible just for you,
so I can tell you
that today's reading is on page 813,
if you want to follow along.
Thanks for being here.
And however
you're getting to Luke chapter eight,
I want to hold out to you three points
I'm going to use as an outline.
Very simple. I want to show you.
Life is impossible.
Life is impossible.
Impossibility is an invitation to believe.
The impossible is possible.
Life is impossible.
Impossibility is an invitation to believe
the impossible is possible.
Let's start with the first one.
Life is impossible.
This story involves
three major characters.
The first, of course, is Jesus.
He's the center
of the whole story of the Bible,
and certainly the center of this story.
But after Jesus, there are two main
characters, and the Bible does this often.
I really love this, where it will take
two characters who are very different,
couldn't be more different,
and have them experience the same thing.
It's a way of showing us
that no matter who we are, the truth
that God wants us to know applies.
Let me let me show you that look with me
at verse 40, Luke chapter eight.
It says this.
Now when Jesus returned,
the crowd welcomed him,
for they were all waiting for him.
And there came a man named Jairus,
who was a ruler of the synagogue.
And falling at Jesus his feet,
he implored him to come to his house,
for he had an only daughter
about 12 years of age, and she was dying.
As Jesus went, the people pressed
around him, and there was a woman
who had a discharge of blood for 12 years,
and though she had spent all her
living on physician,
she could not be healed by anyone.
Two people,
two very, very different people.
On the one hand
you have Jairus, who is a man
and the woman who's a woman, and
that might be the most obvious difference.
But in this culture it was everything.
I mean, Jairus was born into a world
that told him, you can be
whatever you want to be.
The woman was born into a world
that told her, you can be
whatever your husband wants you to be.
Jairus was a wealthy,
successful, religious elite man.
He had a country club membership, drove
a nice car, had a nice
house, had a, I'm sure, a pretty wife
and a pretty 12 year old daughter.
He was a man of success,
a man of means, a man of influence,
not just working at the synagogue,
but a ruler of the synagogue.
He had a corner office.
The woman, on the other hand,
we're told, has an issue with her body
that probably prevented her
from getting married,
certainly prevented her
from having children.
Two ways that a woman in this culture
would have found value.
And at the moment, no matter how much
money she had at the moment, she has none.
So she's single, does not have children
and is poor.
Two very different people,
but in exactly the same circumstance,
dealing with an impossible situation.
Not a hard one, an impossible one.
Jairus, his 12 year
old daughter, is dying.
I can't even imagine what that is like.
I imagine
as a man of influence and a man of means,
he has done everything he can do.
He's talked to all his friends, he's
talked to all their doctors,
and he has fired every bullet that he has.
He still can't heal that little girl,
which must have been excruciating.
I mean, I have three daughters.
They start off believing
their dad is amazing.
I can say it leaks slowly,
but like my
six year old daughter,
she thinks I can do anything.
I mean, just this week I was up early.
It was just me and her that were up
and I was lifting weights in the basement
and I'm sad to tell you that I was not
lifting an impressive amount of weight.
You probably didn't
need me to tell you that, right?
But when I was lifting this pathetic
amount of weight, Ella was watching me.
And at one point I lift the bar
and she just looks at me and goes, wow.
I mean, I really think she thinks
if I had to, I could lift our house.
That's how great her faith and her dad is.
So I can't imagine what it's like
to have that little girl
look at you as she's dying and say, daddy.
Help me.
Daddy, you can do anything.
Help me for the woman.
It's been 12 years.
12 years. She's seen every doctor.
She's been on Google,
she's been on web MD.
She's tried every experimental treatment.
She's done prescriptions.
She's done natural medicine.
She has tried everything.
She has no avenues left, no options left,
no money left
and no better off.
You see, what this story is telling us
is it really doesn't matter
who you identify with.
If Jairus is more like you,
or this woman is more like you.
Either way, you will come to a point
in life where things are impossible.
Listen, I know we try
not to think about it, but don't you know?
Surely
you know you are at this moment dying.
Your body is degrading.
Mine is too.
It's just a reality.
We try to shut it out, but it's real.
We will come to a moment or moments,
a series of moments
where we will be encountering something.
We cannot say.
We know that.
But of course, the question isn't
Will life be impossible?
The question is when it is, Where is God?
Where is God?
It's a great question.
And it actually leads to my second point,
which is, say, not only is life
impossible,
but impossibility is an invitation
as hard as it is.
I just want to ask you for a second
to open yourselves up to a new way of
thinking, because I want you to see that
in this story.
Impact ability is what it takes
for both these people
to come into the story of God.
Look with me again in verse 40.
See what I mean?
Now in Jesus return the crowd welcomed
him, for they were all waiting for him.
And there came a man named Jairus,
who was a ruler of the synagogue,
and falling at Jesus feet,
he implored him to come to his house, for
he had an only daughter
about 12 years of age, and she was dying.
As Jesus went, the people pressed
around him, and there was a woman
who had a discharge of blood for 12 years,
and though she had spent
all her living on physicians,
she could not be healed by anyone.
She came up behind him
and touched the fringe of his garment.
I love that these two come in
completely different ways.
Jairus comes boldly.
He falls at the feet of Jesus.
He will not let Jesus take another step
without dealing with him.
The woman sneaks up like a ninja.
Some of you came in pretty bold
this weekend.
Some of you snuck in the back.
But either way,
it's impossibility that drives them there.
Here's what you have to realize.
Without this little girl being sick.
Without this woman's issue of blood,
they would have lived on the planet
at the same time as the Son of God
and would have missed him.
They would have missed him.
But let me show you that impossibility
drives them out of their own story
into the story of God.
Impossibility rescues them from two places
where we often find ourselves.
Jairus shows us that impossibility
rescues us from comfort.
Me. Jairus is a man of success.
He's a man of means.
He's a man of comfort.
He can buy what he needs.
He can provide for his family.
He can take care of himself.
He's like so many of us.
Most of the problems
we encounter are pretty manageable.
We we live in air conditioning
or I guess more appropriately in heat.
We can take care of ourselves.
Friends, don't you realize that Jairus
had the same danger that you and I have,
which is that
he probably lived most of his life
on autopilot?
Because you get comfortable enough, right?
You know that.
You get comfortable
enough, you get up in the morning,
you do the same thing
you do every morning.
You go to work,
you do the same things. There.
You come home, you make the same meals.
You watch the same TV shows, you
go to bed, you blink and the day is over,
and a day becomes a week,
and a week becomes
a month, and a month becomes a year.
And you get the story.
How many of us have said at some point
soon I've got to get serious about God.
At some point
I've got to start taking seriously
my faith.
At some point, I've got to come to terms
with what I believe about God.
One day, eventually.
But you see, as long as we're comfortable,
we never get there.
Jairus is a ruler of the synagogue.
That means he's a member
of the religious elite.
Probably means he's an enemy of Jesus.
I mean, this guy is going
to live on the planet at the same time
as the Son of God and not only miss him,
he's going to crucify him,
if not for impossibility.
Are you humble enough to admit
that if God left you alone,
you might miss him?
Now the woman is a different story.
It's not comfort that impossibility
drives her out of its competitors.
The woman has been sick for 12 years.
She's seen every doctor.
She's tried every treatment.
She's spent every dollar.
It isn't until she runs out of money and
out of options that she reaches for God.
Can you tell me
that you can't resonate with that?
If you think about discomfort
as a volume knob, every time
you turn the volume up a little bit,
we'll reach for something, but not God.
Maybe a glass of wine in the evening,
maybe therapy,
maybe exercise.
Maybe it's what we're eating.
Maybe we need to start a relationship.
You get the point. Something.
Those things are bad.
It's just that at a volume level of two
or 4 or
6, we feel like we have answers.
So don't you see?
If God wants to get our attention,
the volume has to keep going up.
It took 12
years for this woman to reach out to God.
So great were her other options.
My point is this.
Do you read this story as a story of hope
or a story of despair?
You know, it's a story of hope,
but it begins with impossible.
Because for some of us, maybe even
for most of us, possibly for all of us,
we will never leave our old stories
and enter the story of God
without a little impossible enmity.
Let me give you an example
to make sense of this.
I've told you this before. I have five
kids.
17 is the oldest, the youngest is six.
I got to tell you,
I crush being a parent of young kids.
I've told you that.
That's because when you parent young kids,
you only have to do two things
be fun and keep them alive.
And I can do both of those things.
Parenting teenagers is kicking my butt.
I'm just being vulnerable with you, okay?
My wife is great at it. I am not.
And I've realized as I've wrestled through
having three teenagers
now, why it's so hard for me.
It's because when they're little,
you just keep them from pain.
But when they're teenagers,
you can't do that.
You have everything in me
wants to create rules
and boundaries and structure
to keep them from any and all pain.
But the problem is, even if you can do
that, you might have a happy 17 year old.
You'll have a pretty lousy 27 year old.
Pain forms us.
I mean, over time, your kids have to learn
that they're not going to be varsity
at every sport.
They're not the smartest kid in the world.
They have to learn their limitations.
They have to learn.
They're they're
they're they're character flaws.
They have to be able to grow.
So as a parent, you're constantly
letting enough pain come into their lives.
So that they'll grow.
It's heartbreaking, but it's necessary.
Friends, what if God is like that?
What if
the presence of the impossible in
your life is not a sign of his absence,
but a sign of his affection?
What if God would say the same thing
I would say to my kids?
It's breaking my heart,
I want to, everything in me
wants to run in and solve the problem
for you and and do away with the bullies
and the mean girls and and keep you safe.
But I can't because I love you too much.
Does God love this 12 year old girl?
Does he love this woman?
You know he does.
You've read this story.
But without impossibility,
will they ever know he loves them?
Friends, what if the reason you've walked
away from your faith
is the very evidence
of God's affection for you?
That leads me to my
third point, which is to say
not only that life is impossible.
And not only that impossibility
is an invitation, but it's an invitation
to believe the impossible is possible.
That happens in two ways in this story.
One is obvious.
One is maybe a little less so.
The obvious way is healing.
Healing. Look at the story.
They come to Jesus two different ways,
two different problems.
Same result.
Pick it up.
In verse 44, she came up behind him
and touched the fringe of his garment,
and immediately
her discharge of blood ceased.
Verse 54.
But taking her her.
Here's the 12 year old girl by the hand
he called, saying, child, arise,
and her spirit returned,
and she got up at once.
Friends, I got to tell you, there's
no way to preach this story
except for unapologetically
telling you that
what the Bible is offering you
here is when you find yourself
in impossible situations,
you should bring that to Jesus
at the end of every service.
We have a prayer team up here
in green shirts, ready to pray for you.
Come, come with your cancer diagnosis.
Come with your addiction,
with your wayward child,
with your estranged brother or sister.
Come with what you previously thought
was impossible.
Bring it to Jesus because he can and does
do the impossible.
No ifs, no buts, no qualifications.
Come to Jesus, ask him.
Come to him boldly, or
sneak up and touch the back of his shirt.
He can do what you're asking him to do.
But I have to tell you,
that's not the most impossible thing
in this story.
It's not healing
that is the most important thing.
It's his heart,
not just think about this for a second.
Jesus can heal any way that he wants
right?
Like a couple of weeks ago,
we saw that a Roman soldier came to him
and said, would you heal my servant?
You remember?
And Jesus said, sure,
let's go to your house.
And the guy said, no, no, no,
you don't need to go to my house.
Just say it.
Just say. But.
So Jesus did.
He just healed him by saying that.
So why in this story is he so deliberate?
Why doesn't he do that for Jairus,
his little girl?
When the woman touches him
and is healed, why doesn't he leave it?
Look with me at the story.
Pick it up.
In verse 44,
she came up behind him and touched
the fringe of his garment, and immediately
her discharge of blood ceased.
And Jesus said,
who was it that touched me?
When all denied it, Peter said, master,
the crowd surround
you and are pressing in on you.
Let me just pause here and say
it is possible to be in the crowd around
Jesus and missed the chance to touch him.
Don't let that be you.
But Jesus
said, verse 46, someone touched me, for
I perceive the power has gone out for me.
And when the woman saw that
she was not hidden, she came trembling,
and falling down before him, declared,
in the presence of all the people
why she had touched him,
and how she had been immediately healed.
And he said to her daughter,
your faith is made you well.
Listen, you don't understand the human
experience if you don't understand this.
Healing her was incredible.
But after 12 years of being alone
and abandoned and forgotten and isolated,
the God of the universe
looking at you and saying,
daughter.
Is way more healing.
Jairus.
Same thing.
Jairus and Jesus are walking to the house
after the interruption of the woman.
Verse 49, while he was still speaking,
someone from the ruler's
house came and said,
your daughter is dead.
Do not trouble the teacher anymore.
But Jesus, on hearing this, answered him,
do not fear, only believe,
and she will be well.
You see, Jesus isn't
just after the physical
healing of Jairus, or Jairus daughter
or the woman.
Because I got news for you.
Jairus and his daughter
and this woman are dead.
Even after miracles, people die.
We are all going to die.
Physical healing is awesome.
It's temporary.
Jesus is after their hearts.
Jesus came not to bring temporary healing.
Jesus came for us to believe that the
God of the universe has not abandoned us.
He has not forgotten us.
He loves us enough to call us daughter.
He loves us enough to walk with us,
to throw his arm around us.
And in spite of all the bad things
happening,
look us in the eye like he did
Jairus and say, hey, hey, look at me.
Keep walking.
Don't listen to them.
You see, Jesus
came to do the most impossible thing,
which was to fix
our broken relationship with God.
He did that by impossibly
taking our sin on himself on the cross,
by dying under the weight
of the anger and judgment of God
which we deserved,
being buried in the ground,
and then impossibly rising
from the dead on Easter
Sunday, triumphing over dead death,
ascending into heaven and telling us the
most impossible thing has become possible,
which is that I'm the King of heaven,
and in me you can be forgiven.
In me you can receive mercy.
In me you can be called son or daughter.
I'm going to heaven where I am king.
And I will make sure you join me there.
Physical healing is something he can do.
Ask him.
But don't settle for that.
Come back to God,
because all he wants
is for you
in Jesus to see his heart for you.
That is the most impossible thing
that is now possible.
Let me pray for us.
Father God,
thank you so much for this story.
Thank you for Jairus and the woman you.
You put them both in the story
because you don't want anyone here
to be left out.
We got Jairus.
We got people who resonate with the women.
But we all need Jesus.
Holy spirit, work in our hearts.
Show us the beauty of who God is
and what he's done for us
in Jesus and His name we pray.
Amen.