JARIUS PLEAS FOR HEALING OF HIS DAUGHTER, V. 21-24

1) “And when Jesus was passed over again,” (kai diaperasantos tou lesou) “And when Jesus had crossed over,” by boat to the west side of the Sea of Galilee, from Gadara.

2) “By ship unto the other side,” (en to ploio palin eis to peran) “In the ship again to the other side,” from Gadara, back to the west side, in the Tiberias or Capernaum area, in His own home area, Christ, despised and rejected by -one, becomes the Savior of another, Rom 2:4-7.

3) “Much people gathered unto Him:- (sunechthe ochlos polus ep’ auton) ”A great assembly of common interest was assembled upon Him,” gathered in an orderly manner to Him. For the people heard Him gladly, Luk 8:40.

4) “And He was nigh unto the sea.” (kai hen para ten thalassan) “And He (Jesus) was alongside (by) the sea,” on the seashore, shortly after landing. Apparently runners had seen the boat approaching and hurriedly carried the news to the villages and countryside nearby.

Fuente: Garner-Howes Baptist Commentary

CRITICAL AND EXEGETICAL NOTES

Mar. 5:22. Rulers of the synagogue.The synagogues had no clergy, but were managed by laymen, who conducted or superintended the services, and administered discipline. The rulers of Capernaum had already (Luk. 7:3) approached our Lord on behalf of the centurion who built their synagogue. Now one of them comes to prefer a petition on his own account.

Mar. 5:25. An issue of blood.Hmorrhage. See Lev. 15:19-30.

Mar. 5:36. As soon as Jesus heard.For another reading see R.V. It is not easy to determine the exact shade of meaning which bears here. Dr. F. Field renders, Jesus, making as though He heareth not the word spoken, etc.

Mar. 5:41. Talitha cumi.St. Peter, who was present, would treasure in his memory the very words used.

MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.Mar. 5:21-43

(PARALLELS: Mat. 9:1; Mat. 9:18-26; Luk. 8:40-56.)

Mar. 5:21-24; Mar. 5:35-43. Jairusdaughter.

I. The faith of a father.

1. It was Christward. Behold, there cometh, etc. He came to Christ when all human power was useless. He had confidence in the superhuman power of Christ. He had seen Christ cast out the fiend in the synagogue. He knew of the recovery of the centurions servant. These mighty deeds planted the seed of faith in his heart. Personal trial was needed to make it grow and bring forth fruit. Afflictions are blessings if they bring us to Christ.
2. It was humble. Fell at His feet. Jairus saw beyond the outward poverty of Christ. He, a man of rank and position, prostrate before Christ, conscious of his own inferiority. No place on earth higher than the feet of Jesus. To fall is to rise. Those who lie at His feet shall hereafter sit on His right hand.
3. It was earnest. Besought Him greatly. He knew, felt, begged, one thing. The blessing sought was precious. Only Christ could give it. Jesus delights to hear passionate prayer. Each tear is a jewel, each cry an oration. Csar said, The voices of the distressed crying for my help make sweetest music in my ears. A father delays granting the request of his darling child, not that he is heedless of its appeals, but he likes to hear its little voice. Jesus often delayed to answer, not that He disliked giving, but because He liked the asking.
4. It was imperfect. Come, and lay Thy hands, etc. His faith was inferior to that of the centurion. Say the word only, etc. Healing while being absent a mystery to Jairus. Instrumentality not essential to Christ. The secret of success was in Himself. Distance no disadvantage. Now that He has exchanged worlds He is still the same.

II. The death of a daughter.She was twelve years old, and dying. A very trying age in which to lose her. There was mutual entwining of affections. They had arranged for her future. They had promised to themselves much comfort from her. How insecure are the most promising earthly objects! Jairus daughter, like a beautiful flower, fades in its budding. Her day closed earlynight before noon. Her death full of pathos.

1. The death of a young daughter.
2. The death of an only daughter.
3. The death of a loved daughter.
4. The death of a good daughter. The fact that she was so beloved implies that she was all that could be desired.

III. The sympathy of the Saviour.

1. It was prompt in its action. Jesus was ever ready to sacrifice personal enjoyment for the good of others.

2. It was new in its sphere (Mar. 5:35). It is implied that death is incurable. Jesus, the Infallible Physician, can cure the disease of death. His power reaches to both sides of mortalitythis and other side.

3. It was contemptuously treated. Laughed Him to scorn. What others called death Jesus called sleep; and as we with ease awake the sleeper, so Christ can awake the dead. Hitherto this power of Christ was unrevealed, hence the mockery. Their laughter was serviceable to Christ, for it proved the reality of her death. So Christ was no impostor. They unconsciously reared a platform on which He displayed His Divine power.
4. It was blessed in its results.
(1) Resurrection of the dead.
(2) Joy to the household.
(3) Impetus to the truth.
(4) Glory to Christ.B. D. Johns.

Mar. 5:25-34. The timid womans touch.

I. Salvation is through Christ, not in human endeavours.Here was a woman who had been an invalid for twelve years. In that time she had faithfully sought the best medical advice to be had, had done her utmost to obtain a cure, had spent all that she had in her endeavour to find relief. But it had done no good. It is not strange, indeed, when we consider the empiricism of medicine in that day, that this was so. To cure the disease of this woman there was a great variety of remedies. Among other things, she was to be set in a place where two ways met, with a glass of wine in her hand, and some one was to come up behind her and frighten her. Or seven ditches were to be dug, in which the shoots of grape-vines were to be burned, and then with a cup of wine in her hand she was to sit down in each. No wonder the poor woman was nothing bettered, but rather grew worse. This is the great lesson here: Men try to heal themselves of their sins by their own devices. They go to human advisers in their sense of need. One tells the sin-sick man, as Burns was told, to drive away his melancholy by gay company; another, as Theodore Parker did in Boston years ago, sneers at the idea of sin; another, as did Comte, tells men to worship humanity. Others hope by a pretty good sort of a life, as the phrase goes, to come out right, though without any very definite idea of how it is to be. Now, in opposition to all this, nothing is more plainly taught in Scripture than that salvation must be through Christ.

II. Salvation is through personal effort, and does not come by waiting.There is danger of swinging from the error just considered to the opposite extreme, and doing nothing. Men sometimes make a wrong use of the doctrine of election, and persist in waiting for religious influences instead of coming to Christ without delay. They are practically fatalists. It was not so with this woman. She kept saying, If I touch but His garments, I shall be made whole. She evinced determination and perseverance. No one will fail to-day who comes to Christ in a similar spirit. Him that cometh unto Me, I will in no wise cast out. God appoints us something to do in receiving salvation. We must at least reach out our hand for it and accept it. We must shew such a desire for it as to seek it. God does not want heaven filled with puppets, to move only as He pulls the string. He wants Godlike men, men to be holy as He is holy, and this can be only as each man in the sovereignty of his own free-will decides for himself whether or not he will accept the salvation of Christ. But further than this, as man is made, God could not force salvation on us against our will. Salvation would be impossible without an acceptance on our part. It would not be salvation, but punishment, to be forced into heaven if we did not wish it or enjoy it.

III. Salvation is through faith in Christ, and not by mere contact with Him.Many are at church from Sunday to Sunday listening to the truths taught by the Saviour, without any personal interest in them or purpose to apply them. They are there from curiosity or habit, or because others are, and have no thought or wish to accept Christ for themselves. They cannot receive salvation in such a frame of mind. They must put forth the hand and touch Him. Contact is not enough. There was a spring in California where many came and drank. All admired its clear water and sought it in turn to slake their thirst. But one who knelt there with the rest saw what the others did not, recognised a vein of glittering gold lying beneath the water, put forth his hand, and made his fortune. The difference between the throngs in Christian lands, who do not accept Christ and those who do is a similar difference. The one fail to take Christ to themselves, though perhaps gathering around Him in admiration. The others see His infinite worth and eagerly take the treasure offered them.

IV. Salvation is by simple faith, and not by elaborate works.We trust Jesusthat is all. The mode of expressing our trust is an insignificant matter. There was a certain young peoples society which had a warm discussion as to whether in their meetings the voting should be done by word of mouth or by a shew of hands. It was a question of absolute insignificance. The things of importance were that they should have a definite mind on the subjects considered, should make up their minds aright, and then should express their wills clearly. The method by which their will was expressed was immaterial, so long as it was expressed. So is it in regard to faith in Christ. It is of the utmost importance that we commit ourselves to Christ, but how that committal shall express itself is a matter of comparative indifference. We are like a party under guidance through a country infested by hostile Indians. Such a party is bound to follow its guide implicitly. It is its only hope. We must trust ourselves implicitly to the guidance of Christ. He alone knows what is best for us to do. He alone can guide us through the dangers of life, so that we shall come out safely at the last.

V. Salvation is through Divine love, and not by any mystical virtue.The woman touched the border of Christs garment, that white fringe attached to the blue ribbon which bound His robe. She went to Christ very much as many, two centuries ago, went to King Charles of England to be healed of the kings evil by his touch. But Christ called the woman out of the crowd and forced her to acknowledge her dependence upon Him, partly to teach her and us that He was personally concerned in her healing. It was not something with which His will had nothing to do. It was a result brought about by His knowledge of her need and her faith. She must see that Christs aid was His free gift, and not to be surreptitiously taken from Him; that He knew her desire and freely and lovingly gave her help.

VI. Salvation comes through confession, and not in secret.It was a sore trial for the poor woman to be called to make an acknowledgment of Christ before that unsympathetic company. Why, then, was this sacrifice required of her?

1. It was for the good of others. It is important that the world know that we are saved by Christ. Sometimes Christ did not allow His healings to be heralded, because it was not safe for Him to excite too much publicity; but generally He did. There is no reason now why we should not confess Him, and every reason why we should. I have somewhere read a narrative of the escape of a large company from Malay pirates in the South Seas. A boat was discovered by two or three of the captives. They could easily step on board by themselves, silently drop down the river, and so escape. But they could not bear to leave behind the large company of their friends held in torture and danger of death. So they went back, told their friends their discovery and the possibility of escape it opened, and urged all to undertake it. At night the whole company, including babes in arms, slipped out, passing sleeping guards, tiptoed their way to the river, and so escaped. We honour the few who risked all their hopes rather than leave the rest behind. There are striking points of similarity in our duty to-day. To be sure, we risk nothing in helping others to escape from their sins; but, on the other hand, to find the way of escape ourselves, and to be unwilling to tell others of the way when we have found it, is such ungenerous conduct that we can scarcely conceive it possible in a Christian.
2. But this confession of Christ is required, not only for the good of others, but for our own good quite as much. How much this woman would have lost had not Christ obliged her to confess Him! She needed just this to be confirmed in her assurance of permanent healing. She needed spiritual blessing as well as physical aid. She needed to take a stand on Christs side for the sake of developing her character. She was thus brought nearer to her Lord. Many a despondent one, questioning his salvation, has instantly found peace when he came forward and confessed Christ by joining the Church.A. P. Foster.

OUTLINES AND COMMENTS ON THE VERSES

Mar. 5:22-24; Mar. 5:35-43. Various phases of faith.

1. Supplicating faith heard by Jesus.
2. Eager faith tried by Jesus.
3. Sinking faith strengthened by Jesus.
4. Thankful faith perfected by Jesus.J. J. Van Oosterzee, D.D.

Christ in His offices.View Christ here as

1. The Consoler (Mar. 5:36).

2. The Revealer (Mar. 5:39).

3. The Conqueror of death (Mar. 5:42).

4. The True Man (Mar. 5:43).

5. The Divine Physician, ready to apply to each applicant the remedy required.

Mar. 5:23. The point of death.I. The point of death is a point of mark. The sound mind contemplates it, not as at a distance, but as at hand. The believer keeps it in his eye. He knows it is not the goal, but only the starting-point into eternity.

II. The point of death is a point of momenta momentous point indeed. It is such when a man-child is born into the world, and still more so when he is born a second time. Surely it is not less so when the moment strikes that fixes his eternal destiny!

III. The point of death is a point of interest. Life is the seed-time; when death comes, it is harvestthe time of reaping, and of reaping that very kind of grain which we have sown.

IV. The point of death is a point of reference. It refers man to the futureto the hell from which he is to flee, to the heaven for which he is to prepare, and within the one or other of which his eternity is to be passed. When, therefore, you are reading the folio pages of truth and duty, study also the marginal references, and be ready to meet thy God.

V. The point of death is a point of fact. The disease which is to carry us off may now be in our veins, the place where we are to die is mapped off, the machinery of the providence is all set up, and known unto God is the moment in which the wheels are to go round; so that man is as good as dead. It is only a question of a little timeso very little, that we may almost suppose it traversed.

VI. The point of death is the final point, the closing period in the last paragraph of the last chapter of life. It is the finis indeed. Does it not therefore become us to ascertain what kind of death we are all dying?

VII. In a word, the point of death ought to be the point of preference. There is no sin in Pauls estimate, that departing to be with Christ is far better. Only we would need to see that our hope is on the right foundation; if not, departing must be far worse than to live, vexing and soul-harrowing as life often is. Your preference will not be unsafe, and unsound it cannot be, if you have by faith seen Jesus at the point of death, yea, dead for you. In that moment you have reached the point of life.John Macfarlane, LL.D.

The point of death.This is one point to which every one must come. The paths of earth run in very diverse ways, but they all pass at last the point of death. It is a point that lies hidden from view; no one knows the day or the hour when he will come to it, and yet somewhere along the sunny years it waits for every one. Sometimes this point is struck in early youth. Even the children should think about dying, not as a sad and terrible thing, but as a point to which they, must come, and for which they should prepare.J. R. Miller, D.D.

The beginning of eternity.O most dreadful point, which art the end of time and beginning of eternity! O last moment of life! O first of eternity! How terrible is the thought of thee, since not only life is to be lost in thee, but to be accounted for! Admirable is the high wisdom of God, which hath placed a point, in the midst, betwixt time and eternity, unto which all the time of this life is to relate, and upon which the whole eternity of the other is to depend! O moment, which art neither time nor eternity, but art the horizon of both, and dividest things temporal from eternal! O moment, in which the just shall forget all his labours, and shall rest assured of all his virtues! O moment, which art certain to be; uncertain, when to be; and most certain, never to be again! I will therefore now fix thee in my memory, that I may not hereafter meet thee in my eternal ruin and perdition!Bishop J. Taylor.

Mar. 5:25-34. The faith of this woman was

1. Secretly nourished.
2. Courageously shown.
3. Immediately discovered.
4. Humbly acknowledged.
5. Nobly crowned.J. J. Van Oosterzee, D.D.

By-errands in Gods service.In His blessed path as the Healer He is ever willing to be arrested by the sons of men, counting this no detention, no trouble, no hindrance, but the true fulfilment of His heavenly mission. Opportunities such as these were welcome to Him; nor was He at any time too busy, too much in haste, to take up the case of the needy, however suddenly brought before Him. To Him no interruption was unwelcome which appealed to His love or power. I know not whether we prize our own by-errands sufficiently, our accidental opportunities of working or speaking for God. We like to plan, and carry out our plans to the end; and we do not quite like interruptions or detentions. Yet these may be, after all, our real work. Little can we guess, when forming our plans for the day, on what errands God may send us; and as little can we foresee, when setting out even on the shortest journey, what opportunity may cross our path of serving the Master and blessing our fellow-men. Whitefield, on his way to Glasgow, is drawn aside unexpectedly to tarry a night in the house of strangers. To that family he brings salvation. A minister of Christ misses the train which was to convey him to his destination. He frets a little, but sets out to walk the ten miles as best he may. He is picked up by a kind stranger in a carriage, a man of the world, who has not been in the house of God for years. He speaks a word, gives a book, thanks the stranger in the Masters name for his kindness, and joys to learn some years after that he missed the train in order to be the messenger of eternal life to a heedless sinner.H. Bonar, D.D.

Mar. 5:25. Long affliction.It pleases God to lay long and tedious afflictions on some of His servants in this life.

1. To manifest His great power, strengthening them to bear such long afflictions.
2. To magnify His mercy in delivering them at length out of them.
3. That He may make thorough proof and trial of their faith, patience, and other graces of His Spirit in them.
4. To wean them from this world, and to stir up in them a longing for heaven.
5. To make them more earnest in prayer to Him for deliverance. It is therefore no evidence of Gods wrath, nor any sufficient reason to prove such an one to be out of His favour, whom He so holds for a long time under the cross. Be well content, then, to bear afflictions, though of long continuance, submitting in this matter to the will of God, who knows it to be good and profitable for some to be kept long under discipline.G. Petter.

Mar. 5:26. God often the last resource of sorrow.It is a great piece of infidelity for men not to think of God in afflictions until they have experienced the insufficiency of human remedies. What a mercy is it to be forced to have recourse to God, by misfortunes, diseases, or the ill-usage of men! See here a representation of those physicians of souls who, not acting in the name and in the spirit of Christ, do nothing else but feed and increase their maladies. Men are very far from doing as much for the health of the soul as for that of the body, and from giving all for eternal salvation, as they willingly spend all they have for temporal life. They are apt to seek out such physicians from whom they may suffer little or nothing, such as are likely to be most easy and gentle; and scarce will they hear speak of bestowing some slight alms. What wonder then, if such persons are nothing bettered, but rather grow worse!P. Quesnel.

Mar. 5:27-29. The means of grace.It was not the hem of His garment that stanched her sickness. No; but it was the Divine power and the Divine love which lay beneath the garment. So with the means of grace; they are blessed to our souls because they are the channels through which the presence of the Lord Jesus comes to us to cleanse and to heal. The outward words of prayer cannot profit a man unless the heart rises with them. To say prayers without thought of God is to trust to an outward sign, not to the love and power of the Saviour. So also of the sacraments. The outward elements in the Eucharist are as the hem of His garment; we receive them in the hand and in the mouth: even as the woman touched His skirts. They are blessed to the soul, not because they are outward elements, but because through them there flows to us the virtue and the strength of that body and blood of which the elements are the Divinely appointed pledges and tokens and vehicles. And to this blessing two things are needful: the assured presence of Christ on His part; faith in His presence and in His love upon our part.

Soul-sickness.By how much the soul is of more value than the body, by how much eternity outweighs time, by how much deliverance from everlasting misery and a title to eternal life transcend the comforts and pleasures of this world, by how much the favour and lovingkindness of the Lord are to be esteemed more than all that this earth can supply, just by so much is it more the part of a rational and immortal being to be in earnest about the prosperity of his soul than about the health of his body.

The distress of sin.Our sins and troubles are not so grievous to us as was this womans infirmity to her; and yet they are greater evils. Our untempered, coarse, rude nature, our hard pride, our foolish running after mens smiles and praises, our vanity in all things, our misconception of ourselves, our mistakes and foibles, our foolish faults and sinsdo they distress us much?H. W. Beecher.

Mar. 5:29. The grace of Christ is the only remedy for all the most inveterate diseases of the soul. This will dry up the very fountain itself of sin, which is concupiscence, when the time of the perfect reign of charity shall come. It at present stops the course, the reign, and the dominion of concupiscence. The healing operation of grace alone can do all in a moment: the delays of it do not proceed from inability and necessity, but from dispensation and wisdom. When will it be, O my Saviour, that it shall drain in me the source of all sin, that it shall dry up that fountain of corruption and iniquity which I carry in my flesh and in my heart?P. Quesnel.

Mar. 5:30-34. Love in detection.It was love, not harshness, which made the Lord detect this woman, who had, as it were, stolen from Him a blessing. Her faith was weak, and He would strengthen it. He would not suffer her to go away to her home without confessing Him as her Healer, and rendering Him thanks. He wished to give her His best blessing; she had only received a foretaste. Her humility might seem cowardice, and He would make her brave. Her silence might be want of gratitude, and He would teach her thankfulness. Not yet had she heard His voice or fully known all His love. But now that He has seen her and called her to Him, she is no longer timid, for she has told before all the multitude for what cause she had touched Him, and how she was healed immediately; and then the words are spoken which bring her His fullest blessing: daughter, etc.Bishop Blunt.

Sought out.Not because He did not know her did He seek her out, but because those who were with Him did not know her, and because He would not have her lose the honour, nor them the benefit, which the manifestation of her faith and its success might yield. This detection and manifestation were not designed to make her a gazing-stock, but to set her forth as an example and pattern, which might encourage others to come to the same almighty and exhaustless Fountain of strength and love for higher benefits and more spiritual gifts.

Mar. 5:31. Two kinds of touch.It is not because we surround and follow after Christ, in frequenting the services and even the sacraments of the Church, thronging to its teaching, interesting ourselves and taking our part in its works of piety and charity, sharing loudly and warmly in its controversies, watching closely its movements, rejoicing in its progress, and lamenting over its checks and hindrancesit is not because we do all this, and even more, that we are justified in taking ourselves out of the class of mere spectators of the redemptive work. As it must be a particular kind of wire to draw down the electric current from the thunder-cloud, so it is only a special kind of touchthe touch of faithwhich draws forth healing virtue from Christ.

Mar. 5:34. Not superstition, but faith.What some of us would have sneered at as superstition Christ here dignifies by the name of faith. We pity the poor deluded devotees who crowd to Lourdes, or eagerly touch a relic or bow before a sacred imagewe pity them and laugh at them; but perhaps God sees more that is worthy of love and Divine approbation in that faulty, superstitious worship than in our cold intellectual belief and our well-balanced creeds.

Faith is essentially a personal allegiance to Jesus Christ. Whoever is drawn to Him from any motive, whoever reverences and trusts Him in any way, touches the heart of Christian faith.

Imperfect faith.Where this womans faith was imperfect ours may be complete. She came secretly, distrusting His willingness, believing only in His power to help. It is our privilege to come boldly to the throne of His grace, knowing that He is far more anxious than we to heal every sickness of our soul, and that He has provided in the Holy Communion a blessed means of spiritual contact with Himself.

Mar. 5:35-36. Two views taken of the same case.

1. There is the human viewthe child is dead, trouble not the Master. Men see the outside; they deal with facts rather than with principles; they see the circumference, not the centre.
2. There is Christs viewonly believe; man is called beyond facts, he is called into the sanctuary of Gods secret. We often put the period where God Himself puts only a comma: we say dead, when God Himself says sleepeth.J. Parker, D.D.

Mar. 5:36-43. Christs simplicity in miracle-working.Our Lord in this miracle did His utmost to lower in the minds of the parents any sense of their obligation to Him for the kindness which He designed to shew them. He prepared it by a kind of Divine quivoque: The maid is not dead, but sleepeth. He would have it appear that He was doing nothing more than banishing sleep from the eyes of the slumbering damsel; that by this means He might, I think, put to shame those persons who arrogate to themselves so much praise for their insignificant services; whereas He lessened the immensity of His benefits by His modest way of conferring them.Segneri.

Mar. 5:37. Secret work.Let us thus learn from Christ not to impart, except only to a few chosen persons, those works of God which we propose to undertake, for fear lest they should be obstructed. The Spirit of God would have us labour in secret as much as possible; whereas the spirit of the world continually affects noise and applause.P. Quesnel.

Mar. 5:39. Sleep the image of death.Both are

1. Preceded by weariness.
2. Accompanied by a rest.
3. Followed by a wakening.J. J. Van Oosterzee, D.D.

Why did He thus speak?Because so soon would He recall her spirit from the other world that it would be like an awakening from sleepa sleep shorter than that of an ordinary nights repose. Yes; but the Lord meant more than that by these words. He meant that the death of the body was not death, but only sleep. The word death He reserved for something more terriblethe death of the higher, truer life, the death of the spirit. That alone was death in the eyes of the Lord of life. He would have men think little of the decay of bodily powers, or of the corruption which followed on the dissolution of the outward frame, in comparison with the decay and death and corruption of the spiritual life. Death spiritual alone, in His sight, was worthy of the name of death, because life spiritual alone was worthy of the name of life.Bishop Blunt.

Mar. 5:40. Jesus with the dead.

1. Notice, first, the solitude of Jesus in the midst of those men and women. He was the only man who had that great faith so that He could declare it. And how hard it is to be hopeful alone! A gloomy atmosphere depresses a man; the surroundings of mourning break the most courageous spirits. It was what Christ was which made Him able to stand alone; it was what He was that made Him the Leader of the human race. In the world disciples were faithless, in the garden disciples slept, on the Cross His friends deserted Him. Let us not be too indignant as we read of those facts. It was the condition of His success that it should be so. It was by that that He shewed Himself the Saviour of men, the Incarnate Son of God. It was that which put Him in advance of every position which any son of man had ever taken. Separating Him from all others, it placed Him where all others could come up to Him.
2. Notice, next, that though Christ felt His power, and asserted it only more boldly in the presence of those hopeless men and women, that power could not or did not work until they had all been put forth from the room. It shews us the distinction between two things that we often confuse. Unfavourable circumstances may hinder, but they cannot kill, true power. We cannot do in one moment what Jesus didturn out all adverse influencesand so we let them tell us that they are all-powerful. The actions of Christ among those men were tokens of all His action everywhere. When He prepared the way for that miracle, quickly as it may have been done, it told the story that His power is never more truly present than when it is preparing the way for its own perfect working. It is not what we accomplish, but what we persist in for our God, which saves us. However unfavourable your circumstances, hindering great accomplishments, however hard the battle full of stubborn enemies and hard reverses, however small the gleanings of our poor sterile fields, the faith that fought on the one and worked on the other shall work salvation, and restore to the life of God its Father the soul that was dead in sin. That is a gospel to carry to the discouraged millions of the earth, and by it to nerve them to new effort.
3. After turning out all the other mourners and the minstrels, Jesus took the parents of the child, and entered into the room, and brought the child to life.Those parents by their presence seemed to form the connexion between the faithful Christ and the unbelieving world, for they had a relation to both. Doubtless to them the words of Jesus, She is not dead, but sleepeth,must have seemed very strange; they could not have meant all to them that they did to Him. And yet their parental love must have fastened on them with a hope which did not allow them to join in the scornful laughter with which others greeted them. They found a response in the deepest feelings of their hearts, which no others there appreciated; and so their presence was no hindrance to that miracle-working power of Christ. And, doubtless, in those wailings a hope kept alive by a parents love had yearned for something more, and was ready for it when it came.A. Brooks.

Christs attitude towards earthly relationships.Such a deed as He proposed to do must be done in silence, and yet not in loneliness. The parents were there; He regarded their claim to be present. Parents are the natural guardians of youth and infancy. This act is not at variance with what He elsewhere says about leaving father and mother for His sake, nor does it contradict what He says about the division and conflict which He introduces into family life. Divisions can only exist, or at least be permanent, where the presence and authority of Christ are disregarded by the parents on the one hand, or the child on the other. Where His presence is desired, though at first sight He may seem to disparage or lightly esteem blood relationship, yet in the end we shall find He has cemented earthly relationship, and bound father to child or child to father by closer ties, not of earth only, but of heaven too.G. Walker.

Mar. 5:41. Talitha cumi was a common term of endearment, used by loving mothers to wake their children. The old familiar words were what Jesus used. They seem to tell that in the glad waking, after the sleep of death, there will be nothing startling. It will all be just as natural as waking now. The old familiar love which has blessed us here will greet us there.

In the hand of God.If God vouchsafe not to take our heart in His hand, it will never recover from its sin. The sacred humanity is as it were the hand and instrument of the Divinity, to which it is united in the person of the Word. It is from this humanity that our life proceeds, because it was in this that Christ died and rose again, and completed His sacrifice. He is man, since He takes this dead person by the hand; He is God, since He commands her to live and to arise, and is immediately obeyed.P. Quesnel.

Mar. 5:42-43. The order of conversion.

1. To rise, by forsaking sin, its habits and occasions.
2. To walk a long time in good works.
3. To retire from the world, and to keep silence for some time.
4. To eat the living bread of the Eucharist. One ought to take great care not to give this bread to a dead person. That which ought to precede this Divine food, according to the order here intimated by Christ, is, that a man should rise, leave the bed wherein he was dead, and walk in the practice of virtue, with such edification as even to cause admiration in those whom he had before offended and scandalised by his sins.Ibid.

Silence enjoined.

1. It was better for the parents and better for the child to think, and not to talk, about this great blessing. It is seldom good, even for rulers and their families, to be the objects of interest, curiosity, and gossip.
2. The Lord did not want men to regard Him merely as One who wrought signs and wonders, healed the sick and raised the dead, but wished the report of His Divine teaching to precede or accompany the fame of His wonderful works.
3. The Lord would not needlessly multiply His marvellous works. Though the childs life had been miraculously restored, it was not to be miraculously sustained.Bishop Blunt.

The injunction as to food.It is often said that this is a proof of Christs moderation and reason in the use of His miraculous powers. He who raised from the dead gave no miraculous supply of food. The lesson goes still further, as it shews how the miraculous power goes on, after its first exhibition, to affect all other methods of work. They who before mourned her as dead were now to give her food as living. Jesus had conquered those who laughed Him to scorn; and now those who, by their faithlessness, seemed to shut the poor girl away from life, were, because His power had intervened, to do all in their power to help her life. She was to walk through the world, meeting friends who once had mourned her, demanding and obtaining the tribute of their friendship in a better and richer way. So Jesus changes the world from a hopeless to a hopeful place.A. Brooks.

Eternal life.Faith itself and the new birth conduct us to eternal life, not merely, as once received, but as preserved (Luk. 22:32; Act. 13:43; Heb. 3:14).J. Milner.

ILLUSTRATIONS TO CHAPTER 5

Mar. 5:25-34. A testimony to Jesus.At Csarea Paneas there might been seen, as late as the middle of the fourth century, a house, in the courtyard or garden of which was a group in bronze, consisting of a standing figure and a woman prostrate at its feet. Julian, the Apostate Emperor of Rome, commanded this memorial to be overthrown by his soldiers and destroyed. It was a monument that bore testimony to the faith he had renounced. The house was believed to be that in which this woman, cured of the bloody issue, ended her days, and the group represented the Divine Healer and His fearing and trembling patient.

Mar. 5:27. No going back.When sinners sweep away every other delusion, and view Jesus as the only Saviour, they will persevere till they find. When Cortez went to conquer Mexico, he found that the soldiers were few and dispirited. The Mexicans were many, and the enterprise hazardous. The soldiers would have gone back to Spain, but Cortez took two or three chosen heroes with him, and went down to the seaside and broke up all the ships; and now, he said, we must conqueror die. We cannot go back. When it is death or life, heaven or hell, pardon or condemnation, the sinner will be as determined and courageous as these poor Spaniards or as this poor woman.

Mar. 5:28. The ordinances of the Church may be compared to telephone wires, through which messages are all the while passing. You may climb up and put your ear to the wire, or hold it in your hand, but you will not hear a word of all the important messages that are flashing through it. But let an operator come with his instrument, and attach it, and he hears every word. So in the ordinances we touch the invisible wires that bind heaven and earth together. Along these wires messages are flying,up from earth to heaven, prayers, praises, heart-cries, faith-filled desires; down from heaven to earth, answers of comfort, cheer, joy, and help, blessings of pardon, healing, life, peace.

Mar. 5:34. Faith and omnipotence.Here is an exhaustless reservoir of power, the power of omnipotence, and the means by which it may all be made available to feed our lives. The mill-owner stores up in a reservoir on the heights the water that shall run his mill. Then he needs only a channel or sluice-way that shall bring the water to his wheels. If it were an exhaustless reservoir, like the Atlantic Ocean for extent, he would have no fear that his mill would run dry. These miracles and this text teach the Christian that omnipotence and omniscience alone bound the reservoir of his spiritual graces, and that he has under his own control the width and depth of the channel called faith, which brings them into his life. When Franklin grasped the principle of electricity, he could not only draw the lightning from a single cloudall the electricity in the earth and in all the clouds was at his command, and he could send it upon his errands. When James Watt mastered the principle of the expansive power of steam. not only the little cloud of vapour that issued from his mothers tea-kettle was under his control, but all the steam that could be generated by the stored-up combustibles of the world was really his. When the Christian can grasp this truth of the power of faith, the infinite spiritual resources of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost are his. All power is given unto Me in heaven and in earth. There is the reservoir. All things, whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer, believing, ye shall receive. There is the channel that conveys the power into our lives and makes it available.

Mar. 5:36. God seeking to save.God beseeches men to be reconciled. He stands knockingnot we. Dr. Munhall in an address said there is not even a command to any sinner to pray before believing. A challenge came from a clergyman in the audience, who quoted Rom. 10:13 : Whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be saved. Yes, says Dr. Munhall, but read the next verse: How then shall they call on Him on whom they have not believed?

The seeking Saviour.Mr. Moody was one night preaching in Philadelphia; near the pulpit sat a young lady, who listened with eager attention, drinking in every word. After he had done talking, he went to her. Are you a Christian? No, she replied, I wish I were; Ive been seeking Jesus for three years. Mr. Moody replied, There must be some mistake. Dont you believe me? said the distressed girl. Well, no doubt you think you have been seeking Jesus; but, believe me, it dont take three years for a seeking soul to meet a seeking Saviour. What am I to do, then? You have been trying to do long enough; you must just believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. Oh! said the young lady, I am so tired of that word, Believe, believe, believe! I dont know what it means. Then well change the word, and say, trust. If I say, Ill trust Him, will He save me? I dont say that, for you may say ten thousand things; but if you do trust Him, He certainly will. Well, said she, I do trust Him; but I dont feel any better! Ah! said Mr. Moody, I see; youve been looking for feelings for three years, instead of looking to Jesus. If the translators of the Bible had everywhere inserted feelings instead of faith, what a run there would be upon the Book! But God does not say a word about feelings from Genesis to Revelation. With men seeing is believing, but with the believer believing is seeing. An orphan child was once asked by her little friend, What do you do without a mother to tell your troubles to? Mother told me to go to Jesus; He was mothers Friend, and Hes my Friend too, was the simple reply. But He is a long way off; He wont stop to mind you. Her face brightened, as she said, I dont know about that, but I know He says He will, and thats enough for me. And should not that be enough for us all?

Mar. 5:39. Only sleeping.Is it no comfort to be told that the friend you thought to be dead only sleeps? There was a time when Christians took great consolation from this very truthwhen it made them ready to die, and resigned to see those near to them die at the call of God. Go look at the catacombs of Rome, and see, in the records which those faithful caverns have preserved of the creed and life of our Christian forefathers, how the early Christians thought of death. The inscriptions are full of faith. Here a mother sleeps in Jesus; there a child sleeps in Jesus; husband, wife, and friendthey all sleep,there is no sign of death in the catacombs. And I would rather visit now their grim and unadorned recesses, with the feelings suggested by the simple stones which tell how faithful Christians died as well as lived in the comfort of their faith, than go into our gay modern cemeteries, with their costly classic, not Christian, ornaments, telling of the unrest of broken-hearted survivors, rather than of the peaceful sleep of the dead in Christ. Our martyred forefathers of the early Church may teach us how to live, to die, to bury, and to mourn for our dead. She is not dead, but sleepeth. The sleep is longit is too deep for us to breakour loved one may not be awakened by the call of affection or the cry of anguish; but still she only sleepsshe is not dead.

Sleepand death.There is in the German a beautiful fable which represents the angel of slumber wandering over the earth in company with the angel of death. As the evening draws near they approach a village and encamp upon one of its hills, listening to the curfew as it tolls the knell of parting day.At last the sounds cease, profound silence reigns round about, and the dark mantle of night covers the earth. Now the angel of sleep rises from her bed of moss, and, stepping forward to the brink of the height, silently scatters the unseen seeds of slumber. The evening wind noiselessly wafts them out over the habitations of weary men. Sweet sleep settles down upon all the inhabitants of the village, and overcomes them all, from the old man who nods in his chair to the infant resting in its cradle. The sick forget their pain; the afflicted, their anguish; even poverty is oblivious of its wants. All eyes are closed. After her task has been performed, the angel of slumber turns to her sister and says: When the morning sun appears, all these people will praise me as their benefactor and friend. How delightful it is to go about doing good so silently and all unseen! What a beautiful calling we have! Thus spoke the angel of sleep; but the angel of death gazed upon her in silent sorrow, and a tear, such as the undying shed, stood in her earnest eye. Alas! said she, I cannot rejoice, like you, in the gratitude of men. The earth calls me its enemy, and the destroyer of its peace. O my sister! replied the angel of slumber, at the great awaking of the resurrection morning the souls of the blessed will recognise you as their friend and benefactor. Are we not sisters, and the messengers of our common Father? They ceased to speak, but the eyes of the death-angel glistened with tears as they both fled out into the darkness of the night.

Mar. 5:41. Make for the higher.Nineteen centuries have passed since the Saviour spoke these words, but they are as full of meaning now as they were then to every girl who hath ears to hear. Talitha cumi,My child, arise; get up from any slothful habit, from any frivolous, idle, selfish habit you have formed. My little lamb, mount up, be better this year than you were last year. Let His voice reach your innermost heart and awake you from the sleep of indifference. Not long ago an interesting memoir was written of one who heard words very similar to those which the Saviour spoke to the daughter of Jairus, and who acted upon them. An early friend of Catherine Spooner, who became Mrs. Tait, wife of the late Archbishop of Canterbury, remembers that in the flush of her bright girlhood, when every innocent delight was poured into her cup, she once told her how she had heard in her inmost heart, amidst all these joys and pleasures, a hidden voice saying, Make for the higher.This aspiration and consecration of her life was never lowered. In the sphere of activity and social intercourse, where the providence of God placed her, Make for the higher hallowed and sweetened all lower things for her.

Fuente: The Preacher’s Complete Homiletical Commentary Edited by Joseph S. Exell

4. THE RAISING OF JAIRUS DAUGHTER 5:21-43.

a. The urgent request of Jairus. 5:21-24

TEXT 5:21-24

And when Jesus had crossed over again in the boat unto the other side, a great multitude was gathered unto him: and he was by the sea. And there cometh one of the rulers of the synagogue, Jairus by name; and seeing him, he falleth at his feet, and beseecheth him much, saying, My little daughter is at the point of death: I pray thee, that thou come and lay thy hands on her, that she may be made whole, and live. And he went with him; and a great multitude followed him, and they thronged him.

THOUGHT QUESTIONS 5:21-24

225.

Where did the boat land in which Jesus crossed the Sea? Who was there to meet Him?

226.

What is meant by the expression rulers of the synagogue.

227.

Show the humility and sincerity of Jairus.

228.

Why call his daughter My little daughter?

229.

Why was the multitude so interested?

COMMENT

TIMEAutumn, A.D. 28. Probably in the afternoon of the same day He healed the demoniac.
PLACECapernaumat the house of Matthew.

PARALLEL ACCOUNTSMat. 9:18-19; Luk. 8:40-42.

OUTLINE1. Jesus comes back to Capernaum, Mar. 5:21. 2. Jairushis needhis request, Mar. 5:22-23. 3. Jesus goes with him, Mar. 5:24.

ANALYSIS

Since this is but the beginning of the incident we will offer an analysis in the later section.

EXPLANATORY NOTES

Mar. 5:21. The miracle on the eastern side of the lake took place in the early morning, and later in the day Jesus and his company were back on the western side, but not in the town of Capernaum. He was nigh unto the sea, and there the crowd gathered to him, having been waiting (Luke) for his return. Possibly the change in his mode of teaching and the introduction of parables had for the time quickened the popular curiosity.

Mar. 5:22-24. One of the rulers of the synagogue. Presumably the synagogue in Capernaum, though nothing positively determines the place.The name Jairus is the Greek form of the Hebrew Jair; it is the name of one who was a great man at the conquest of Canaan (Deu. 3:14), and later of one of the Judges of Israel (Jdg. 10:3-5). Of Jairus nothing is known except what is recorded here, If, as is probably the case, he was a ruler of the synagogue in Capernaum, he would naturally be one of those who were sent by the centurion who had built a synagogue to intercede for him when his servant was sick (Luk. 7:3). In that case he would be no stranger to the healing power of Jesus, and his confidence would be fully explained.His eagerness appears in his falling down at Jesus feet and his entreating him greatly, muchi.e. earnestly and persistently.My little daughter lieth at the point of death. The phrase eschatos echei, paraphrased at the point of death, is late Greek, and is said to have been condemned by the grammarians as bad Greek. Luke says that he had an only daughter, about twelve years of age, and she was dying, not lay a dying. Thus Mark and Luke agree perfectly in their statement; but, in Matthew, Jairus says, My daughter just now died. The Greek verb is in the aorist, and is even now dead is not a good translation of it: that she has died already is distinctly affirmed. But the discrepancy is much less than one might think. Matthew tells the story compendiously; he omits all reference to the subsequent message from the house, in which the tidings of her death are brought; and he groups the two communications in one, making Jairus tell the whole in a single sentence. He gathers into this first request all the information about the case that was brought to Jesus before he reached the house. In Luke the request is only that he will come to the house; in Mark and Matthew the request is added that he will lay his hands upon her, with the full expression of confidence that that will be the means of restorationaccording to the story as it is in Mark, of restoration from the verge of death; according to Matthew, of restoration from death itself, A beautiful example of confident resorting to the grace and power of the Saviour. It was not in vain; no refusal awaited such an appeal. The request was brought to the lake-shore, where Jesus arrived in the boat, What he was doing we are not told; perhaps he had not had time to begin; or Jairus may even have been among those who were waiting for him when he came.The crowd heard the request, and followed, as Jesus went with him, up from the lakeside into the town. He let them follow for a part of the way, not turning them back until his own time had come. He was not helpless in the matter; he did escape from the crowd when he was ready to insist upon it. Both in Mark and in Luke the words that describe the pressure of the throng are very strong words; in Luke, crowd to suffocation well represents it. Not much rest for our Saviour after the overpowering weariness of the previous eveningonly the sleep on the boat. The healing and the repulse across the lake, a crowd waiting for him on his return, and now a call to go and give life to a dying child! But his compassion never failed, and he never considered himself. We have no reason to imagine that any consideration of himself ever held him back from a deed of love. He was the one perfectly unselfish Being, never false to this divine character. God is the unselfish One, and Christ is the manifestation of God. (W. N. Clarke).

FACT QUESTIONS 5:21-24

261.

Are we to understand that Jesus came back on the same day He delivered the two demoniacs? Did He use the same boat?

262.

Please read Mat. 9:18-19 and get the connection of the feast of Matthew. Just when did Jairus come to Jesus?

263.

Why did Jairus fall at Jesus feet? There could have been at least two reasons; discover them.

264.

Why ask Jesus to place His hands upon the girl?

265.

If she was made whole wouldnt she live? Why the two expressions?

266.

Why mention the press of the crowd?

Fuente: College Press Bible Study Textbook Series

‘And when Jesus had crossed over again in the boat to the other side, a great crowd was gathered to him, and he was by the sea, and there comes one of the rulers of the synagogue, Jairus by name, and seeing him he falls at his feet, and pleads with him, saying, “My little daughter is at the point of death. I beg you that you will come and lay your hands on her that she may be made whole and live.” ’

Again the source of this information remembers where they were when Jairus came with his request. Having crossed the lake they had landed and found themselves quickly surrounded by a great crowd on the seashore.

Jairus was ‘one of the rulers of the synagogue’. Strictly ‘ruler of the synagogue’ would refer to the single ‘ruler’ who controlled the administration and especially the organisation of the service at the synagogue, but there were others who helped in the general administration and running of the synagogue, a council of elders, and these were also called rulers, men of standing in the community. Jairus was probably one of these, ‘one of the rulers’. The emphasis on it would seem to infer that Jairus was an important man in the community. For ‘ruler of the synagogue’ see Luk 8:49; Luk 13:14; Act 13:15; Act 18:8; Act 18:17. See also Mat 9:18; Mat 9:23; Luk 8:41; Luk 18:18.

‘Named Jairus’. Omitted in a few manuscripts but probably by accident. It has huge support. The name Jair occurs in the Old Testament (Num 32:41; Jdg 10:3), and in LXX of Est 2:5 we have Jair translated as a similar form to here, ‘Jairus’. The mention of the name confirms the authenticity of the account, for names are rarely given in Mark.

‘There comes.’ What was Jairus doing leaving his sick child? Why did he not send someone else? The answer can only be that things were so bad that he was desperate and was determined to act himself as a last resort. He wanted to exercise his personal authority and make a personal appeal. We can almost see him turning to to his wife and saying, ‘No. I will go myself’. He had watched by that bedside in tears. But hope had now gone. He had not thought of going to Jesus earlier, and perhaps someone had mentioned helpfully that ‘the prophet’ was back. So in desperation this outwardly important man submerged his pride as a synagogue elder and sought the help of Jesus. He had enough faith in what He was able to do to seek Him out. Had he not done so his daughter would have died and gone to her grave unhelped. (Jesus would have been able to do no healing because of his unbelief). The lesson was clear. If the Synagogue would submit to Jesus then life would be made available to its offspring.

It is no accident that this story comes just before Mark’s comment that Jesus ‘could do no mighty work’ in ‘His own country’, with a few exceptions (Mar 6:5). There few were willing to do what Jairus did, few sought Him out, for there He was seen as just a local boy and not as a mighty prophet.

‘He falls at His feet.’ This important man was in such distress and despair that he forgot his dignity and came as a suppliant. He wanted Jesus to realise how concerned he was and how strongly he felt. Now any prejudices against Jesus had been thrown aside. Behind his action Mark probably saw the need for all Jewish rulers to fall at the feet of Jesus.

‘My little daughter is at the point of death.’ The situation was very serious. The young girl was close to death. It was only that that had moved him to his present action. The emphasis on ‘little daughter’ adds to the pathos. We learn later that she was twelve years old (Mar 5:42), almost at the point of womanhood. But she was his pet.

‘I beg you that you will come and lay your hands on her.’ ‘I beg you’ is read in, although the Greek assumes some such thing. Literally it is ‘in order that having come you would lay hands on her’, signifying ‘please, having come, lay your hands on her’ (the imperative use of ‘ina). Jairus had clearly seen Jesus in action and knew His healing method (see Mar 6:5; Mar 7:32; Mar 8:23; Mar 8:25).

‘That she may be made whole (‘be saved’ – regularly used of healing) and she shall live.’ Her life was in the balance. All depended on Jesus restoring her before it was too late, and he had faith enough to believe that He could.

Fuente: Commentary Series on the Bible by Peter Pett

Jesus Demonstrates His Power and Authority Over Life and Death (5:21-43).

Having demonstrated His power over nature, and then over the world of evil spirits, Jesus will now demonstrate His power over life and death by the raising of Jairus’ daughter. That she was truly dead is quite clear, and she was said to be twelve years old. In conjunction with the fact that the woman with permanent bleeding had suffered it for twelve years the number is probably significant. Twelve is the number of the tribes of Israel. They were both therefore pictures of Israel in its need.

Quite apart from the certainty of all the people involved, including the family, all of whom knew that she was dead, if Jesus had known that she was still alive He would not have taken His three favoured disciples in with Him in secret, for He only called on them in this way when something very special was involved (e.g. His transfiguration and His prayer in Gethesemane). The fact that He said that she was only sleeping is not significant, for Jesus used the same expression of Lazarus before bluntly stating that he was dead (compare Joh 11:11-14). But although she was dead, when He left her she was no longer dead. She was gloriously alive.

However, the account does not stand on its own but is interwoven with another occurrence, the healing of the unclean woman. She too was dying, and she had been dying for twelve years. Indeed we could have headed this section Two Desperate People At The End of Twelve Years. Both were connected with the number twelve, the number of Israel. The daughter had lived from conception for twelve years and was now dying. The woman had had a blood flow for twelve years and she was cut off from the Temple and the people by uncleanness. Both were in their own way representative of the people of God, dying in sin and unclean before God.

But in order to confirm the lesson lying behind this we need to go to a passage in Ezekiel 16. There Jerusalem was likened to a baby, cast out at birth covered in the blood flow of its mother, whom God had commanded ‘in her blood’ to live (Mar 5:6). He then betrothed her to Himself, but she remained naked (it is not a natural picture). And when she came to an age for love (i.e. about twelve years of age) He wiped the blood from her (Mar 5:9). So either the idea is that for twelve years she had been covered in vaginal blood, or it is that she was once again covered in blood because of her menstruation, seen as connecting back to her first condition. And now she was His to be restored to full glory. It would seem that this is the lesson behind both the child whom God will make to live, and the woman with a flow of blood for twelve years who will be made clean. The two together, alongside Ezekiel 16, reveal that Jesus (the Bridegroom – Mar 2:19) has come to make clean and give life to His people so as to betroth them to Himself.

The fact that the two stories are intertwined in all the Synoptics demonstrates that it was so from the beginning because the two incidents did happen together, but Mark concentrates first on one and then on the other. This comes out in the analysis.

Analysis of 5:21-34.

a And when Jesus had crossed over again in the boat to the other side, a great crowd was gathered to Him, and He was by the sea, and there comes one of the rulers of the synagogue, Jairus by name, and seeing Him he falls at His feet, and pleads with Him, saying, “My little daughter is at the point of death. I beg you that you will come and lay your hands on her that she may be made whole and live” (Mar 5:21-23).

b And He went with him, and a great crowd followed Him, and they pressed in on Him (Mar 5:24).

c And a woman who had had emissions of blood for twelve years, and had suffered many things under many doctors, and had spent all that she had, and was not any better but rather grew worse, having heard things about Jesus, came in the crowd behind and touched His clothing, for she said, “If I touch but His clothing I will be made whole” (Mar 5:25-28).

d And immediately the gushing of blood dried up and she felt in her body that she was healed of her curse (Mar 5:29).

c And Jesus, immediately perceiving in Himself that power had left Him, turned Himself about in the crowd and said, “Who touched my clothes?” ’

b And His disciples said to Him, “You see the crowd pressing in on you. Do you ask, ‘who touched me?’ ” (Mar 5:31).

a And He looked around to see her who had done this thing. And the woman, fearing and trembling, knowing what had been done to her, came and fell down before Him and told Him all the truth, and He said to her, “Daughter, your faith has made you whole. Go in peace and be whole from your curse” (Mar 5:32-34).

Note that in ‘a’ Jairus falls at Jesus’ feet, pleads on behalf of his daughter so that she might be made whole, and in the parallel the woman falls at His feet, is called ‘daughter’, and is made whole. In ‘b’ the crowds press in on Him and in the parallel it is pointed out to Him that the crowds press in on Him. In ‘c’ the woman touches Him, and in the parallel He asks, ‘Who touched me?’ Centrally in ‘d’ she is fully restored.

Fuente: Commentary Series on the Bible by Peter Pett

Jarius’ Daughter and the Woman with the Issue of Blood ( Mat 9:18-26 , Luk 8:40-56 ) Mar 5:21-43 gives us the moving account of the healing of Jarius’ daughter and of the woman with the issue of blood as a testimony of Jesus’ authority over sickness and sin. It becomes obvious when reading this story that both Jarius and the woman had heard of the fame of Jesus and His marvelous healing power and had come to seek healing because of these reports.

Mar 5:23 Comments In the Greek text, the phrase “at the point of death” reads, “is at her last,” or, “is at the end (of her life).” In other words, the father saw the progression of his child’s illness and knew that she was near the point of death.

Mar 5:24  And Jesus went with him; and much people followed him, and thronged him.

Mar 5:25-34 Comments Lev 15:25-30 gives us the laws regarding the issues of blood. The Mosaic Law required her to separate herself.

Mar 5:25  And a certain woman, which had an issue of blood twelve years,

Mar 5:25 Scripture References – Note parallel passages:

Mat 9:20, “And, behold, a woman, which was diseased with an issue of blood twelve years, came behind him, and touched the hem of his garment:”

Luk 8:43, “And a woman having an issue of blood twelve years, which had spent all her living upon physicians, neither could be healed of any,”

Mar 5:28 Comments The woman with the issue of blood had heard about people being healed by touching the garments of Jesus, for we see in Mar 6:56 and in Luk 6:19 that many people were being healed by this method.

Mar 6:56, “And whithersoever he entered, into villages, or cities, or country, they laid the sick in the streets, and besought him that they might touch if it were but the border of his garment: and as many as touched him were made whole.”

Luk 6:19, “And the whole multitude sought to touch him: for there went virtue out of him, and healed them all.”

This healing by touching the garment of Jesus is similar to the healings in Act 19:12 as many were healed who touched the garments from Paul’s body.

Act 19:12, “So that from his body were brought unto the sick handkerchiefs or aprons, and the diseases departed from them, and the evil spirits went out of them.”

Mar 5:29  And straightway the fountain of her blood was dried up; and she felt in her body that she was healed of that plague.

Mar 5:30  And Jesus, immediately knowing in himself that virtue had gone out of him, turned him about in the press, and said, Who touched my clothes?

Mar 5:30 Comments The Greek word translated “virtue” in Mar 5:30 is , which is translated “power” in some modern English versions (such as ASV, CEV, ESV, RSV). Therefore, we see that the power, or anointing of God, went forth from Jesus to heal the woman. Jesus touched those who needed healing as a means of imparting the power of the Holy Spirit to heal. Jesus appeared to Kenneth Hagin and gave him a special healing anointing by touching the palms of his hands with Jesus’ finger. Kenneth Hagin says that when he laid hands upon someone, he could feel the anointing flow through him and into the individual if the person believed. If the person was doubting, then the anointing would not flow. [101]

[101] Kenneth Hagin, A Commonsense Guide to Fasting (Tulsa, Oklahoma: Faith Library Publications, c1981, 1994), 21-2; Kenneth Hagin, I Believe In Visions (Tulsa, Oklahoma: Faith Library Publications, c1984, 1986), 53-4, 57.

Mar 5:31  And his disciples said unto him, Thou seest the multitude thronging thee, and sayest thou, Who touched me?

Mar 5:31 Comments Why was the anointing released to only one woman when a crowd of people were pressing against Jesus? We see the answer in Mar 5:33 when Jesus said, “Thy faith hath made thee whole.” It is our faith in God that releases the anointing. We see from Mat 14:34-36 that the entire crowd could have been healed as did happen with the men of Gennesaret.

Mat 14:34-36, “And when they were gone over, they came into the land of Gennesaret. And when the men of that place had knowledge of him, they sent out into all that country round about, and brought unto him all that were diseased; And besought him that they might only touch the hem of his garment: and as many as touched were made perfectly whole.”

In this city, as many as touch his garment were healed. We see the faith in the people of this city when the Mat 14:35 says, that the men of that place “had knowledge of him.” We cannot believe beyond our knowledge of God’s Word. This means that when they heard about Him, they believed He had the power to heal them. Therefore, they sought to touch Him, just as the woman of issue of blood sought Him and touch He to receive her healing.

Mar 5:34 Comments This testimony by Jesus Christ of the woman’s faith resulting in her healing sparked faith in many others as they too came to touch Jesus’ garments and were healed, which we see taking place in Mar 6:56, “And whithersoever he entered, into villages, or cities, or country, they laid the sick in the streets, and besought him that they might touch if it were but the border of his garment: and as many as touched him were made whole.”

Mar 5:35  While he yet spake, there came from the ruler of the synagogue’s house certain which said, Thy daughter is dead: why troublest thou the Master any further?

Mar 5:36  As soon as Jesus heard the word that was spoken, he saith unto the ruler of the synagogue, Be not afraid, only believe.

Mar 5:36 “Be not afraid, only believe” – Comments Fear can be sudden. When it comes, it seems to grip our emotions. However, faith in God, which operates by love (Gal 5:6), is what can cast off and break the grip of fear. Hence,

1Jn 4:18, “There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear : because fear hath torment. He that feareth is not made perfect in love.”

Gal 5:6, “For in Jesus Christ neither circumcision availeth any thing, nor uncircumcision; but faith which worketh by love.”

Mar 5:37  And he suffered no man to follow him, save Peter, and James, and John the brother of James.

Mar 5:37 Comments Peter, James, and John seemed to be closer to Jesus than were the other disciples. These three disciples were:

1. At the Mount of Transfiguration (Mat 17:1-8, Mar 9:2-8, Luk 9:28-36, Joh 1:14).

2. With Jarius’ daughter (Mat 9:18-26, Mar 5:4-43, Luk 8:40-56).

3. In Gethsemane (Mat 26:36, Mar 14:32, Luk 22:40).

Also, John was the disciple whom Jesus loved (Joh 13:23; Joh 20:2; Joh 21:7).

Mar 5:40  And they laughed him to scorn. But when he had put them all out, he taketh the father and the mother of the damsel, and them that were with him, and entereth in where the damsel was lying.

Mar 5:40 Comments It is interesting to note the fact that Jesus put the scorners out of the room before raising Jairus’ daughter from the dead. This is because He had to drive out the atmosphere of doubt and unbelief. Anyone who has every ministered the Gospel knows the witness in his/her spirit of a receptive heart or a stubborn, closed heart of the hearer. When someone is hungry to hear the Gospel, the anointing of words seems to flow out of the mouth of someone preaching the Gospel. To the scorners, the minister feels as if he has to push each word out with force, because it does not flow out easily, and there is little or no inspiration of words. Jesus knew that if He were to be in the presence of doubt and unbelief, it would hinder the flow of the anointing.

One of the most dramatic examples of this in my ministry took place in 2006. I had the privilege of preaching a number of times in a particular church to a large congregation of over five thousand people. For certain reasons, there were not friendly relationships between the pastor and his wife and me. As I had been invited to preach occasionally in this pulpit over the years, his wife had always hosted me. On one particular Sunday morning in early 2006 I was preaching the three services. Neither the pastor, nor his wife, nor any other skeptical members of the staff were in attendance. As I stepped up to the pulpit and laid down my Bible and notes, the choir was finishing its worship song. I then lifted my hands to heaven, and it felt like I touched electricity. For the next forty-five minutes we stood in the presence of God. I believe one major factor that led to this open door from Heaven was the fact that there were no skeptics sitting close to the front, and the people’s hearts were receptive to my ministry. In contrast, a few months later the pastor and his wife were seated in the front row when I had been invited to preach. It was difficult for me to speak, because I did not feel an unction. It was not that I had not prepared myself, but I believe that a hearer’s heart can determine whether the anointing flows from the minister or not.

Mar 5:43  And he charged them straitly that no man should know it; and commanded that something should be given her to eat.

Mar 5:43 Comments In one country where he was rejected (Luk 8:39), Jesus tells the healed man to tell the Gadarenes what God has done. However, in a place where people received Him, He told them to be silent about what God had done (Mat 8:4; Mat 9:30, Mar 5:43, Luk 5:14; Luk 8:56). Why did He do this? Perhaps because Jesus knew that He could not return to the country of the Gadarenes and there would be no one else to preach the Gospel to them. In the regions where multitudes came out to hear Jesus, He needed the liberty to move about and to teach smaller crowds in order to communicate the Good News more effectively.

Mar 5:37-43 Comments “he suffered….he charged” – Note the authority by which Jesus conducted Himself with people as He ministered healing.

Fuente: Everett’s Study Notes on the Holy Scriptures

Raising of the Daughter of Jairus.

The prayer of Jairus:

v. 21. And when Jesus was passed over again by ship unto the other side, much people gathered unto Him; and He was nigh unto the sea.

v. 22. And, behold, there cometh one of the rulers of the synagogue, Jairus by name; and when he saw Him, he fell at His feet,

v. 23. and besought Him greatly, saying, My little daughter lieth at the point of death; I pray Thee, come and lay Thy hands on her that she may be healed, and she shall live.

v. 24. And Jesus went with him; and much people followed Him and thronged Him.

Mark relates this story at greater length, with closer attention to detail than the other evangelists, Mat 9:18; Luk 8:41, except in the matter of symptoms of the sickness, in which Luke, the physician, is more exact. Upon leaving the country of the Gerasenes, Jesus sailed directly across the sea, back to the region which He had left only the day before. Most of the people had undoubtedly not yet thought of returning home, and they could therefore soon assemble once more and come to Him, as He was by the Sea. They gladly received Him, for they were all waiting for Him, Luk 8:41. But before He had had an opportunity of performing the work of His ministry, as was His custom, one of the chief men, of the rulers of the local synagogue, whose name was Jairus, came, looking for Jesus. As soon as he saw the Lord, the distraught father fell down at His feet and begged and urged Him most earnestly, with many words. The words pour forth from his mouth in the anxiety of his pleading: My daughter is about breathing her last; she may even now be dead. Come at once and quickly; lay Thy hands upon her that she may be healed and live. Jesus, after His usual manner of kind sympathy and willingness to help, did not tarry by the seaside, but turned at once to go after the pleading father. It was, as usual, the faith implied and expressed in his words that impressed the Lord. Jairus was sure he was possessed of unshakable faith that Jesus could perform this miracle, this cure. He sees the fulfillment of his wish, if Christ would but consent to come. But he must first pass through a test of his patience. Mark notes especially that the people pressed around the Lord from all sides; He jostled and pushed with the crowd.

Fuente: The Popular Commentary on the Bible by Kretzmann

Mar 5:21-24 . See on Mat 9:1 ; Mat 9:18 . Comp. Luk 8:40-42 , who also keeps to the order of events.

.] a point of difference from Matthew, according to whom Jairus makes his appearance at Capernaum at the lodging of Jesus. See on Mat 9:18 .

Mar 5:23 . ] recitative.

] Comp. Athen. xiii. p. 581 C; Long. i. 6; Plut. Mor. p. 179 E; Lucian, Tox. 22. This diminutive expression of paternal tenderness is peculiar to Mark. Comp. Mar 7:25 . It does not occur elsewhere in the N. T.

] a late Greek phrase. See Wetstein and Kypke, also Lobeck, ad Phryn. p. 389.

. . .] His excitement amidst grief and hope speaks incoherently. We may understand before : this I say , in order that, etc. This is still simpler and more natural than the taking it imperatively , by supplying volo or the like (see on Mar 12:19 ).

Fuente: Heinrich August Wilhelm Meyer’s New Testament Commentary

6. Conflict of Jesus with desponding Unbelief on the Sick-bed and Bed of Death; Healing of the Woman with the Issue of Blood; Restoration of Jairus Daughter; and Triumph of Jesus over the Healing Art, and the Worlds Lamentations for the Dead. Mar 5:21-43.

(Parallels: Mat 9:1; Mat 9:18-26; Luk 8:40-56)

21And when Jesus was passed over again by ship unto the other side, much people 22gathered unto him; and he was nigh unto the sea. And, behold,9 there cometh one of the rulers of the synagogue, Jairus by name; and when he saw him, he fell at his feet, 23And besought10 him greatly, saying, My little daughter lieth at the point of death: 1 pray thee, come and lay thy hands on her, that she may be healed; and she shall live. 24And Jesus went with him; and much people followed him, and thronged him. 25, And a certain woman,11 which had an issue of blood twelve years, 26And had suffered many things of many physicians, and had spent all that she had, and was nothing bettered, but rather grew worse, 27When she had heard of Jesus, came in the press behind, and touched his garment. 28For she said, If I may touch but his clothes, I shall be whole. 29And straightway the fountain of her blood was dried up; and she felt in her body that she was healed of that plague [scourge]. 30And Jesus, immediately knowing [having known] in himself that virtue had gone out of him, turned him about in the press, and said, Who touched my clothes? 31And his disciples said unto him, Thou seest the multitude thronging thee, and sayest thou, Who touched me? 32And he looked round about to see her that had done this thing. 33But the woman, fearing and trembling, knowing what was done in12 her, came and fell down before him, and told him all the truth. 34And he said unto her, Daughter, thy faith hath made thee whole; go in peace, and be whole of thy plague [scourge]. 35While he yet spake, there came from the ruler of the synagogues house certain which said, Thy daughter is dead; why troublest thou the Master any further? 36As soon as Jesus heard13 the word that was spoken, he saith unto the ruler of the synagogue, Be not afraid, only believe. 37And he suffered no man to follow him, save Peter, and James, and John the brother of James. 38And he cometh14 to the house of the ruler of the synagogue, and seeth the tumult, and them that wept 39and wailed greatly. And when lie was come in, he saith unto them, Why make ye this ado, and weep? the damsel is not dead, but sleepeth. 40And they laughed him to scorn [jeered him]. But when he had put them all out, he taketh the father and the mother of the damsel, and them that were with him, and entereth in where the damsel was lying.15 41And he took the damsel by the hand, and said unto her, Talitha cumi; which is, being interpreted, Damsel, (I say unto thee,) arise. 42And straightway the damsel arose, and walked; for she was of the age of twelve years. And they were astonished with a great astonishment. 43And he charged them straitly that no man. should know it; and commanded that something should be given her to eat.

EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL

See on the parallels.Mark connects the return from Gadara with the narrative of the first raising of the dead, in accordance with his own principle of arrangement. According to the more exact account of Matthew, we must place in the interval the healing of the paralytic, the calling of Matthew, and the offence taken by the Pharisees and Johns disciples at Jesus eating in the house of the publican. In his presentation of the events that now follow, we once more observe the exact delineation of Mark. Concerning his little daughter (), the father here says and in an appeal which announces itself at once by an . In the account of the woman with an issue, Mark makes it very prominent that she had suffered much from many physicians, which Luke, the physician, much more gently intimates. And the womans healing is emphatically expressed: The fountain of her blood was dried up; she felt in her body (in her feeling of bodily vigor) that she was delivered from her plague (scourge). He does not (like Luke) expressly mention Peter as the one who replied to the Lords question as to who touched Him, Thou seest the multitude, etc.; but he records once more that Jesus turned and looked round to find out who had done this. We see how the woman comes forward trembling with fear, falls down before the Lord, and confesses all. We see Jesus separating Himself, with Jairus and the three elect disciples, from the multitude, in order to go into the house of death. The tumult of the lamentation for the dead is here vividly depicted. He defines accurately the group of those who enter; we hear the original Talitha cumi; we see the damsel at once, after her restoration, arising and walking, as she was able, being twelve years old; and hear how rigorously Jesus charged the people not to make much rumor about the miracle (which in itself could not be concealed); and finally, how He commanded that they should give the maiden food. Here and there Luke, and here and there Matthew, approximate to Marks description.

Mar 5:21. He was nigh unto the sea.Meyer: Here there is a discrepancy with Matthews account, according to which Jairus entered the house of Jesus in Capernaum. But it was neither in Jesus house, nor in that of the publican Matthew; for the transaction with the Pharisees and the disciples of John doubtless took place after the meal in a public place. Hence there is no discrepancy in the narratives.

Mar 5:23. My little daughter.(Tender expression of the troubled father).That Thou mayest come ( ).The and the give vivid reality to his urgent words; they are to be referred to the kneeling and cry for help (). Hence there is nothing to be supplied in the text.

Mar 5:26. Had suffered many things from many physicians.How various were the prescriptions of Jewish physicians for women in that case, and what experiments they were in the habit of making, see in Lightfoot, p. 614. Meyer. Comp. also the article Krankheiten in Winer. She probably suffered from a chronic hmorrhage in the womb, and its long continuance endangered life. See also the article Reinigkeit. Such a woman was, according to Lev 15:25, through the whole time unclean, and was required, after the evil had passed away, to bring on the eighth day an offering for purification. On the strong Oriental abhorrence of such persons, see the same article.

Mar 5:28. For she said,thinking in audible words.Touch but His clothes.That the more precise hem of His garment, occurring in Matthew and Luke, is wanting in Mark, gives no warrant for conjectural emendation.

Mar 5:29. The fountain of her blood.Not euphemistic description of the womb, but vivid description of the cause of the evil; the blood being represented as flowing from a fountain.She felt in her body.Euth. Zig.: As her body was no longer moistened, etc. But here there is something greater signified: she experienced the healthy feeling of new life.

Mar 5:30. Virtue had gone out of Him.Meyer maintains that Jesus perceived the flowing of His virtue after it took place; a simultaneous knowledge of it being thought at variance with the words. But, on the contrary, it must be observed that the simultaneousness of the knowledge is declared in the ; first by the , and then by the Aorist. The opposite explanation might be made to favor a magical interpretation of the event, and Strauss criticism upon it. Yet Meyer himself refers with an emphatic note of exclamation to Calovius: Calovius quoted the passage against the Calvinists: vim divinam carni Christi derogardes.

Mar 5:38. Them that wept.A scene of Jewish ceremonial lamentation over the dead, in which Mark omits the minstrels (see Matthew), and lays less stress than Luke upon the weeping and bewailing, but only to give more prominence to the tumult and mechanical liturgical cries (by ). On the Jewish lament for the dead, see Grotius on Matthew, and Winers article Trauer.

Mar 5:41. Talitha cumi, .Similar original Aramaic words occur in Mark, Mar 3:17; Mar 7:11; Mar 7:34; Mar 14:36.

Mar 5:42. She was of the age of twelve years.Reason for the statement that she arose and walked at once. Bengel: Rediit ad statum, tati congruentem.

Mar 5:43. That no man should know it.That is, should know the occurrence in its precise characteristics, viz., the way and manner of the restoration of the dead. On the motive of this prohibition, see Meyer.16That something should be given her to eat.Theophylact: That the raising might not be regarded as only an appearance. Meyer: In order to show that the child was not merely delivered from death, but from sickness also. Chiefly, however, because she was in need of strengthening by food.

DOCTRINAL AND ETHICAL

1. See on the parallels.The touching of Christs garment, and the conscious issuing of a divine virtue from Him as the result, are a testimony to the living unity and reciprocal influence of the divine and human natures in His personal consciousness; in which the human nature was not (as the old dogmatics taught) merely in a passive relation.

2. Two miracles of healing were wrought on diseased women. Otherwise, they are mainly male sufferers who are adduced as examples of His healing acts. Not that other instances were wanting; for the very first healing recorded by the Evangelists took place on a woman, Peters wifes mother. Luke mentions some women who were dispossessed of devils, Mar 8:2. But the deliverance of Mary Magdalene from seven devils we regard, after the analogy of Mat 12:45, as a symbolical expression of an essentially great conversion.The woman with an issue of blood, the dead maiden: progression in the manifestation of suffering in the female sex. That the former had been afflicted twelve years and the latter was twelve years old, was a coincidence from which rash criticism has vainly sought to extract ground of suspicion.

3. We term this narrative a history of victory over despairing unbelief. This appears in the comfortless wail of the Jewish lament over the dead; in the circumstance that the people around the dead maiden laughed at the Lord, when He declared that she was not dead, but slept; but especially in the message which they sent to the ruler of the synagogue, Why troublest thou the Master any further? wherein there is an evident tone of bitter and almost ironical unbelief. The faith of Jairus itself appears, at first, as only a fruit of distress. Hence it, was subjected to a severe test, that period of deep anxiety during Christs delay while He cured the woman with the issue of blood. The weak germ of Jairus faith was encompassed by desponding unbelief. Even the faith of the sick woman struggles with the despondency into which a long series of disappointed acts of trust in physicians had thrown her. She does not venture to bring her distress publicly before the Lords notice; the rather as, being ceremonially unclean, she had in a forbidden manner mingled with the crowd, and as her malady was of such a kind as shame would not allow her to speak of. Hence her faith must be brought to maturity by a public confession, even as that of Jairus by a season of delay.

4. As Christs work of salvation assumed a specific form in many acts of blessing in favor of the male sex, so also Christianity has wrought immeasurable specific benefits for the female. Here we see, first, a wretched sick woman, lost in the crowd; and Christ delivers her not only from her sickness, but also from the morbid dread and fear of her feminine consciousness. Even shame required redemption and sanctification by the Spirit of truth. And so the female sex has been redeemed from the reproach of inferiority, impurity, the rude contempt of mans prejudice, and the ban of self-depreciation.
5. Reischl: The woman was afraid; partly ashamed on account of the nature of her malady, partly disturbed by the consciousness of impropriety, as having, while Levitically unclean, mingled with the people, and even touched the great Teacher Himself. In the last point she forms a contrast to the leper, whom the Lord Himself touched. Under the veil of diffidence, however, there was a touch of womanly boldness, which was excused by the faith that the touching of Christ would heal her.
6. Daughter, be of good courage, thy faith hath saved thee: go in peace. Thus He blessed her in the same manner as He had blessed that palsied man. And in fact we must connect together these two petitioners for help, in order that we may see two characteristic forms of faith in the male and in the female contrasted. Both applicants pressed through with confidence, and seized their deliverance almost by force: the man did it in mans fashion, entering through the roof like a robber; the woman in womans fashion, as it were, like a female thief. But both were recognised by the Lord, as showing the pure spirit of confidence. (Langes Leben Jesu, ii. 682.) But the faith of this woman had a superadded conflict to maintain with her timorous natural feeling confronting the fearful power of prejudice.

HOMILETICAL AND PRACTICAL

See on the parallels.The miracles of Christ a wonderful connected chain.New life added to new life in the way of Christ, until the great word is fulfilled, Behold, I make all things new!Christ at once ready to help the man who comes from the powerful party of His opponents.The ruler of the synagogue at the feet of Jesus; or, the victory of the Gospel over party spirit.The triumph of Christ over the whole domain of sickness and death, a sign also of His supremacy over all natural means of help and human skill in healing.Christ the Physician of physicians (as the Preacher of preachers, the Teacher of teachers, the Judge of judges, the Prince of kings).Christs divine power the sign of salvation to all the despondency, little faith, and unbelief of man.Christ in our history the conqueror of all hindrances to His own work and mans faith.The woman with the issue, and the dead maiden; or, Christ the Helper in all suffering; whether secret or public.Christ the Prince of salvation in the domain of secret sorrows and silent sighs.Hearing and answering all the sighings of faith.The test to which the faith of the ruler and of the woman was subjected: 1. The element common to both: they were wanting in the full surrender of trust. Both must be set free from fear and despondency. 2. The difference: the spiritual ruler must retire, wait, submit, despair of all signs for hope, and then in his despair learn to believe. He scarcely believed in the invigorator of the sick, and now He must believe in the awakener of the dead. He must, at the same time, in humility yield precedence to a poor unclean woman, and in the case of a seeming religious impropriety.The woman must come forward and confess.Even amidst the pressure of thousands the Lord perceives the silent and gentle touch of a single believer.Internal union with Jesus high above the external.The hastening and the delaying of Jesus sublime above the haste and delay of the world.Christ purposed here to effect, not the healing of the sick, but the raising of the dead.Twice (in the history of Lazarus too) He first yielded the point to death, that He might approve Himself afterwards his conqueror.With the Lord the spiritual is everything, and the edification of the inner life the great concern.The gradually progressive manifestation of Christs power in raising the dead, a sign and symbol of the great and universal resurrection.

Starke:Quesnel.:God has His own times and seasons; He delays and yet helps. Have patience, and walk in the way He marks.Hedinger:Daring wins.Quesnel:Men are slow to do for the healing of the soul what they are ready enough to do for the cure of the body.Cramer:Medicines are not to be despised, Sir 38:1; but God does not always see fit to prosper them.To use them is not displeasing to God, but ungodly trusting in them is.The humility of the woman.Canstein:Shame and fear would keep us back from Christ, but faith presses near to Him with a right and laudable shamelessness.Osiander:In our sickness we should put our trust, not in medicine, but in God.Faith is stronger than all earthly medicaments.The Lord is not ignorant what benefits we have received from Him, and He will demand an account of all the good deeds lie has done to us.Bibl. Wirt.:Tempted souls think that God takes no care of them, but He faithfully remembers their case; the deeper they are in misery, the more graciously does His compassionate eye rest upon them.Canstein:To acknowledge our own weakness and Gods power, is to speak the truth indeed.What God has done for us in secret we should publicly speak of to His glory.Go in peace.Hedinger:Reason despairs at sight of death.In perfect faith there is no fear.Quesnel:Let us learn from Christ to confide only to a few elect ones the works of God which we have to do, that those works may not be thwarted.To sorrow in secret over our dead is Christian, but to howl and cry is heathenish.Hedinger:Gods wonderful works must have devout and attentive witnesses: away with tumult!Nova Bibl. Tub.:Why do ye mourn, ye parents, over the departure of your children? Jesus will one day lay His mighty hand upon them, raise, them, and give them back to you.

Lisco:The question of our Lord was designed to free the woman from her false fear of man.The delay of help, and the message, were severe tests of Jairus faith; but the healing of the woman strength ened his faith again, as did the word of Jesus, Mar 5:36;Braune:The urgency and continuance of her malady, the vanity of all human help, the lack of substance, were three steps which brought the sick woman to faith; and the feeblest cries of the believing heart were understood by her Lord.The Jews received this custom of lamentation from the Romans [Qy.: see Jer 9:17]. This purchased grief was intended to make the occasion of death important, to distribute the impressions of sorrow over many, and lighten the grief of the friends. Thus it was mere heathenish vanity.Schleier-macher:The more mighty love is in those who can help others, and, on the other hand, the more longing and trust there is in those who need help, the more good will be the result in the particular case, though we may not be able to show how, and the beginnings of cause and effect may be concealed from us.It is always the case that from those whom God has called to do good, many influences proceed which they themselves do not in the special cases know of. But how much more efficacious would charity be, if those from whom the influences proceed did not think so much about those which they themselves receive!How important it is for the general order of the community that we should not neglect our own individual personal relations!Christendom has now still to press through the world violently with its blessings.Although the power of Christ is continually entering more and more into the order of nature, yet that which Christianity has wrought in the world from its beginning is the greatest miracle that we know; but we must be careful to distinguish from it the internal miracle, which only those see who live in internal fellowship with the Redeemer.Bauer:Mark how He does not break the bruised reed, or quench the smoking flax!

Footnotes:

[9]Mar 5:22.The not in B., D., L., Vulgate, Versions, Tischendorf, Meyer; bracketed by Lachmann.

[10]Mar 5:23.The Present , Tischendorf, after A., C., L.

[11]Mar 5:25. wanting in A., B., C., Vulgate, Versions, Lachmann, Meyer.

[12]Mar 5:33. wanting in B., C., D., Syriac, Coptic, Tischendorf; bracketed by Lachmann.

[13]Mar 5:36., Tischendorf, after B., L., .

[14]Mar 5:38.The Plural has most support, viz.: A., B., C., D., F., Versions, Lachmann, Tischendorf.

[15]Mar 5:40.The (Elzevir) is set aside by Tischendorf, after B., D., L., Versions; bracketed by Lachmann.

[16]Meyer mutes the motive to be, a desire on the part of Christ to repress the tendency to fanatical expectations and tumults concerning the Messiah, among the Jews.Ed.

Fuente: A Commentary on the Holy Scriptures, Critical, Doctrinal, and Homiletical by Lange

(21) And when Jesus was passed over again by ship unto the other side, much people gathered unto him: and he was nigh unto the sea. (22) And, behold, there cometh one of the rulers of the synagogue, Jairus by name; and when he saw him, he fell at his feet, (23) And besought him greatly, saying, My little daughter lieth at the point of death: I pray thee,, come and lay thy hands on her, that she may be healed; and she shall live. (24) And Jesus went with him; and much people followed him, and thronged him. (25) And a certain woman which had an issue of blood twelve years, (26) And had suffered many things of many physicians, and had spent all that she had, and was nothing bettered, but rather grew worse, (27) When she had heard of Jesus, came in the press behind, and touched his garment. (28) For she said, If I may touch but his clothes I shall be whole. (29) And straightway the fountain of her blood was dried up; and she felt in her body that she was healed of that plague. (30) And Jesus immediately knowing in himself that virtue had gone out of him, turned him about in the press, and said, Who touched my clothes? (31) And his disciples said unto him, Thou seest the multitude thronging thee, and sayest thou, Who touched me? (32) And he looked round about to see her that had done this thing. (33) But the woman fearing and trembling, knowing what was done in her, came, and fell down before him, and told him all the truth. (34) And he said unto her, Daughter, thy faith hath made thee whole: go in peace, and be whole of thy plague. (35) While he yet spake, there came from the ruler of the synagogue’s house certain which said, Thy daughter is dead: why troublest thou the Master any further? (36) As soon as Jesus heard the word that was spoken, he saith unto the ruler of the synagogue, Be not afraid, only believe. (37) And he suffered no man to follow him, save Peter, and James, and John the brother of James. (38) And he cometh to the house of the ruler of the synagogue, and seeth the tumult, and them that wept and wailed greatly. (39) And when he was come in, he saith unto them, Why make ye this ado, and weep? the damsel is not dead, but sleepeth. (40) And they laughed him to scorn: but when he had put them all out, he taketh the father and the mother of the damsel, and them that were with him, and entereth in where the damsel was lying. (41) And he took the damsel by the hand, and said unto her, Talitha cumi; which is, being interpreted, Damsel, I say unto thee, arise. (42) And straightway the damsel arose, and walked: for she was of the age of twelve years, and they were astonished with a great astonishment. (43) And he charged them straitly that no man should know it; and commanded that something should be given her to eat.

Both those interesting cases have been largely considered. Mat 9:18-26 to which I therefore refer. See also Luk 8:41 , etc.

Fuente: Hawker’s Poor Man’s Commentary (Old and New Testaments)

21 And when Jesus was passed over again by ship unto the other side, much people gathered unto him: and he was nigh unto the sea.

Ver. 21. He was nigh unto the sea ] Here, and now, it was that Levi made him a great feast; whereof see Mar 2:15-16 .

Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)

21 43. ] RAISING OF JAEIRUS’S DAUGHTER, AND HEALING OF A WOMAN WITH AN ISSUE OF BLOOD. Mat 9:18-26 . Luk 8:41-56 . The same remarks apply to these three accounts as to the last. Matt. is even more concise than there, but more like an eye-witness in his narration (see notes on Matt. and Luke); Mark the fullest of the three.

Fuente: Henry Alford’s Greek Testament

21. ] = . . Luke.

Fuente: Henry Alford’s Greek Testament

Mar 5:21-43 . The daughter of Jairus and the woman with bloody issue (Mat 9:18-26 , Luk 8:40-56 ).

Fuente: The Expositors Greek Testament by Robertson

Mar 5:21 . : the inescapable crowd, in no hurry to disperse, gathers again about Jesus, on His return to the western shore. : not merely to , but after Him, the great centre of attraction ( cf. ., Mar 2:13 , Mar 4:1 ). . ., by the sea (here and there); how soon after the arrival the incident happened not indicated ( cf. Mat 9:18 for sequence and situation), nor is the motive of the narrative. Weiss suggests that the Jairus story is given as another instance of unreceptivity, Mar 5:40 (Meyer).

Fuente: The Expositors Greek Testament by Robertson

NASB (UPDATED) TEXT: Mar 5:21-24

21When Jesus had crossed over again in the boat to the other side, a large crowd gathered around Him; and so He stayed by the seashore. 22One of the synagogue officials named Jairus came up, and on seeing Him, fell at His feet 23and implored Him earnestly, saying, “My little daughter is at the point of death; please come and lay Your hands on her, so that she will get well and live.” 24And He went off with him; and a large crowd was following Him and pressing in on Him.

Mar 5:22 “One of the synagogue officials named Jairus” His name means “YHWH has enlightened.” This was the person in charge of administrative tasks like the maintenance of a synagogue building. He would have been a man of some religious standing in the community.

“fell at His feet” This was a gesture of reverence as well as worship (cf. Mar 5:6; Mar 5:22; Mar 5:33 where different words are used, but the same gesture). An Oriental leader prostrate in the street before an unofficial rabbi would have been very unexpected!

“My little daughter is at the point of death” Mat 9:18 says she had died. This man believed that Jesus’ presence and touch would heal/restore his daughter.

Mar 5:23

NASB, TEV”she will get well”

NKJV”she will be healed”

NRSV”she may get well”

NJB”she may be saved”

This is an aorist passive subjunctive of the term sz, used in its OT sense of physical deliverance (cf. Jas 5:15). In the NT it takes on the sense of spiritual salvation. It is theologically uncertain whether all of the ones Jesus healed were spiritually saved. His actions may have started a process that culminated later in the person’s spiritual life and is not recorded in Scripture.

As an example look at this chapter where the demoniac’s faith is seen after his being healed, not before. The young girl is helped because of her father’s faith and the woman with a bleeding problem was willing to make Jesus ceremonially unclean in a selfish (even superstitious) act of touching a rabbi. Where does self-interest end and faith begin?

Mar 5:24 “pressing in on Him” Luk 8:42 adds that the press of the crowd was so great that it was at the point of being hard to breathe.

Fuente: You Can Understand the Bible: Study Guide Commentary Series by Bob Utley

by ship. = in (Greek. en. App-104.) the ship.

much people = a vast crowd.

unto. Greek. epi. App-104.

nigh unto = beside. Greek. para. App-104.

Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics

21-43.] RAISING OF JAEIRUSS DAUGHTER, AND HEALING OF A WOMAN WITH AN ISSUE OF BLOOD. Mat 9:18-26. Luk 8:41-56. The same remarks apply to these three accounts as to the last. Matt. is even more concise than there, but more like an eye-witness in his narration (see notes on Matt. and Luke);-Mark the fullest of the three.

Fuente: The Greek Testament

Mar 5:21-24

3. JAIRUS BESOUGHT JESUS

TO HEAL HIS DAUGHTER

Mar 5:21-24

(Mat 9:18-26; Luk 8:41-56)

21 And when Jesus had crossed over again in the boat unto the other side, a great multitude was gathered unto him , and he was by the sea.–Matthew (Mat 9:1) says he “crossed over, and came into his own city.” Luke (Luk 8:40) says: “As Jesus returned, the multitude welcomed him;for they were all waiting for him.” When his boat first started from the eastern shore, where he was not wanted, the people on the western shore could see it, and as soon as they saw which way it was headed, they could assemble at the spot where it was to land, and wait for him. He landed, then, at Capernaum in the midst of a waiting multitude; and this was the great multitude (verse 24) that followed him when he started for the house of Jairus.

22 And there cometh one of the rulers of the synagogue, Jairus by name;–“One of the rulers” shows there was a plurality of rulers of the synagogue, just as there is a plurality of elders in the church. He was one of the elders (Luk 4:3), or presiding officers, who ruled over the affairs of the synagogue.

and seeing him, he falleth at his feet,–In the posture of reverence and earnest entreaty. Matthew (Mat 9:18) says he “worshipped him.” He bowed himself before Jesus with his face to the ground, an act of respect and reverence. Dropping upon the knees, and bringing the forehead to the ground, was the Oriental method of reverence and worship.

23 and beseecheth him much, saying, My little daughter is at the point of death:–She was his only (laughter, and was about twelve years of age. (Luk 8:42.) He loved his child and spoke of her tenderly. In the last extremity, Matthew says: “Is even now dead.” Luke (Luk 8:49) says: “While he yet spake, there cometh one from the ruler of the synagogue’s house, saying, Thy daughter is dead; trouble not the Teacher.” Verse 35 states the same. There is no discrepancy. She was “at the point of death” when Jairus left home, and died while he was beseeching Jesus for help, and some one followed and told him of the sad fact. Matthew condenses all into the one statement: “Is even now dead.” Frequently one historian does not relate all the facts, while others relate facts which he omits; hut all are true. Matthew relates the main one, “Is even now dead,” while Mark and Luke go more into detail and relate the condition of the child when Jairus left home and how the fact of her death was made known to him.

I pray thee, that thou come and lay thy hands on her, that she may be made whole, and live.–His faith in Jesus to heal is expressed in his leaving his dying daughter to seek the aid of Jesus, and by his earnest entreaty. Yet he thought personal contact was necessary. This is seen in the fact that he wanted Jesus to lay his hand on the child. It was the elder of that synagogue who had previously come to Jesus in behalf of the centurion whose servant was sick, requesting that he should go and heal the servant, and saying, “He is worthy that thou shouldest do this for him; for he loveth our nation and himself built us our synagogue.” (Luk 7:4-5.) As Jairus had been concerned in the cure of that servant, it is not surprising that when his own little daughter was at the point of death, he resorted to the same unfailing source of deliverance.

24 And he went with him; and a great multitude followed him, and they thronged him.–In kindness and mercy and immediately Jesus went with this ruler to his home. He was always ready to bless. He is now, although in a different way.

Fuente: Old and New Testaments Restoration Commentary

Hope for the Hopeless

Mar 5:21-43

We turn from the demon-driven man to this woman, weakened by long disease. For the one there was the outward manifestation of evil, but for the other inward wasting and decay. Let those who are conscious of the ravages of evil in their hearts, destroying their strength, establish connection with Christ as slight as the fingers touch of the garment hem, and forthwith His virtue will enter and stay their inward malady. His power is ever going forth, and faith receives as much as it desires. The reservoir of power is always full, but how few, how very few, have learned the secret of tapping it!

Crowds throng Him, but only one touches. Proximity to Christ does not necessarily imply the appropriation of Christ. But where there is the faintest touch of faith, there is an instantaneous, may we not say, automatic, response. There may be great weakness, the fingers may be too nerveless to grasp, they can only touch; but the slightest degree of faith saves, because it is the channel by which Christ enters, Mar 5:34. Even children are liable to the havoc caused by sin, Mar 5:35-43. Death has passed on all, and from the universal blight even the little ones cannot find immunity. But again we turn to the Master of life, whose touch is as gentle as a womans and whose voice can penetrate the recesses of the unseen.

Fuente: F.B. Meyer’s Through the Bible Commentary

CHAPTER 21

Who touched Me?

And when Jesus was passed over again by ship unto the other side, much people gathered unto him: and he was nigh unto the sea. And, behold, there cometh one of the rulers of the synagogue, Jairus by name; and when he saw him, he fell at his feet, And besought him greatly, saying, My little daughter lieth at the point of death: I pray thee, come and lay thy hands on her, that she may be healed; and she shall live. And Jesus went with him; and much people followed him, and thronged him. And a certain woman, which had an issue of blood twelve years, And had suffered many things of many physicians, and had spent all that she had, and was nothing bettered, but rather grew worse, When she had heard of Jesus, came in the press behind, and touched his garment. For she said, If I may touch but his clothes, I shall be whole. And straightway the fountain of her blood was dried up; and she felt in her body that she was healed of that plague. And Jesus, immediately knowing in himself that virtue had gone out of him, turned him about in the press, and said, Who touched my clothes? And his disciples said unto him, Thou seest the multitude thronging thee, and sayest thou, Who touched me? And he looked round about to see her that had done this thing. But the woman fearing and trembling, knowing what was done in her, came and fell down before him, and told him all the truth. And he said unto her, Daughter, thy faith hath made thee whole; go in peace, and be whole of thy plague.

(Mar 5:21-34)

Our Lord Jesus was on his way to Jairus house to perform a miracle of mercy upon his daughter, who was at the point of death. No doubt, word had gotten around in a hurry about what the Savior had done in Gadara. Therefore, Jairus ran to the Master, fell down at his feet, and begged him to come to his house and heal his daughter. As they went along the crowds began to gather. You can imagine the commotion.

“And when Jesus was passed over again by ship unto the other side, much people gathered unto him: and he was nigh unto the sea. And, behold, there cometh one of the rulers of the synagogue, Jairus by name; and when he saw him, he fell at his feet, And besought him greatly, saying, My little daughter lieth at the point of death: I pray thee, come and lay thy hands on her, that she may be healed; and she shall live” (Mar 5:21-23).

Excitement filled the air. Here was a man, who claimed to be Gods Messiah, the Christ, God incarnate. Everyone knew his claim; but he had begun to back it up and substantiate it by doing things that no one else could possibly do. In Gadara the devils themselves were constrained to publicly acknowledge him as the Lord their God, who had absolute power over them. Now, he is going to heal a young girl, whose father was a very prominent citizen in the community. This little girl was at the point of death. Everybody wanted to see the miracle. They followed the Lord as closely as possible, pressing him as he walked along. Everyone was excited. Everyone was curious. Everyone was filled with anticipation.

As they moved along, a poor, stooped, anemic woman, a woman who had been plagued with an issue of blood for twelve, long, tormenting years, made her way through the crowd. I can almost see her. She must not let herself be seen. She is unclean! She has no right by law to even be in the streets; but she is dying. She has heard about the Lord Jesus. No one else could help her. She had tried everything imaginable. Yet, she believed that Jesus of Nazareth was indeed the Christ, the Son of God. She said, If I could just touch the hem of his garment, I am sure, he would make me whole. So she crawled through the thronging crowds until she got close. Then, weak and trembling, she stretched out her hand in faith and touched the Lord Jesus.

As soon as she touched him, the Lord Jesus stopped dead in his tracts. He felt virtue, power, and efficacy go out of him. Therefore, he turned around and said, Who touched me? The disciples said, Youve got to be kidding. With all these people around, you are asking, Who touched me? Then, the Master said, Somebody touched me (Luk 8:46).

As this poor woman was immediately healed of her plague when she touched the Lord Jesus, so sinners are healed of the plague of their hearts, freed from the curse of the law and the guilt of sin as soon as they touch the Lord Jesus Christ by faith.

The Curse

“And a certain woman, which had an issue of blood twelve years, And had suffered many things of many physicians, and had spent all that she had, and was nothing bettered, but rather grew worse” (Mar 5:25-26).

There is no greater evidence of the total depravity of all human beings by nature than the fact that we all incur disease, get sick, and die. All sickness, disease, and death are the result of sin and the curse of God upon the human race because of sin.

This womans sickness was a specific example of sin and the curse of Gods law upon us all by nature. Her sickness, her unceasing issue of blood was something that made her ceremonially unclean. So it is with us all by nature. We are plagued with sin. The plague of sin makes us unclean. Being unclean, we are cursed and barred from the holy Lord God. Look at what the Holy Spirit tells us about this woman.

She had an issue of blood twelve years. She was ceremonially unclean (Lev 15:25) because of a disabling sickness that was killing her. This poor soul had suffered many things of many physicians. She had been to every doctor in town, including the quacks, the charlatans, the snake oil herbalists, and the faith healers. There are countless physicians of no value (Job 13:4) to the souls of men. Dr. Decision tells sinners that they can be saved if they will simply make their decision for Jesus. Dr. B. Good exhorts the sinner to reform his life. Dr. Free Will admonishes the sinner to will himself into life. Dr. Ceremony urges the poor soul to observe religious ordinances and sacraments to get the grace he needs. Dr. Right Church tells poor souls that they can be made whole if they get into the right church. Dr. Excitement urges the sin-sick soul to seek a miracle, speak in tongues, pray through, and wrestle with God until he gets God to save him. Dr. Emotion prescribes introspection, urging dead sinners to look within themselves for feelings of repentance and sorrow, or longings for Christ, by which they may know they are fit to be saved.

Next, we are told that the poor, dying woman spent all that she had. Like those described in Isa 46:6 lavishing out everything for the help of idols, though she spent everything she had seeking help from physicians of no value, she was nothing bettered, but rather grew worse. Religion without Christ is of no value to lost sinners. It never helps. Rather, it only makes the sinners condition worse. The practice of religion without Christ is but eating and drinking damnation (1Co 11:29). Oh, that sinners crippled with sin, instead of looking to physicians of no value in tears and attempted reforms in their own strength, might, like this woman, be brought to Christ!

The Crowd

“And Jesus went with him; and much people followed him, and thronged him. And a certain woman, which had an issue of blood twelve years, And had suffered many things of many physicians, and had spent all that she had, and was nothing bettered, but rather grew worse, When she had heard of Jesus, came in the press behind, and touched his garment” (Mar 5:24-27).

Like the crowds that pressed the Lord Jesus, people come to church, profess faith, and claim to follow him for many reasons. Some come being stirred by religious excitement, following the crowd. Some take up a profession because of peer pressure. Many do so because they fear going to hell.

The crowds of people thronged our Lord; but only one person gained any benefit. Only one person came from behind and touched him. Only one person in this great crowd needed him. Only one person believed the Lord Jesus could actually cure her of her plague. Believing him, she touched him. Be wise and follow her example.

Reach out and touch the Lord, as He passes by.

Youll find Hes not too busy to hear your hearts cry.

Hes passing by this moment, your needs to supply.

Reach out and touch the Lord as He goes by!

The Cure

“When she had heard of Jesus, came in the press behind, and touched his garment. For she said, If I may touch but his clothes, I shall be whole. And straightway the fountain of her blood was dried up; and she felt in her body that she was healed of that plague. And Jesus, immediately knowing in himself that virtue had gone out of him, turned him about in the press, and said, Who touched my clothes?…And he said unto her, Daughter, thy faith hath made thee whole; go in peace, and be whole of thy plague” (Mar 5:27-30; Mar 5:34).

There are several things here, which ought to catch our attention. Many reading this story miss the most important aspects of it. They put all the emphasis upon the woman. Inspiration puts the emphasis on the woman only as the recipient of mercy and benefactor of grace. But, in so far as the act of mercy and the work of grace are concerned, the emphasis must be placed upon the Savior. This woman was made whole in exactly the same way every sinner saved by the grace of God is made whole. She was made whole by a fivefold work of God almighty.

1.A Work of Providence Her sickness was not an accident, but a work of God for her soul to bring her to Christ. That which was the destruction and death of others was for her the instrument of mercy. By his wise, gracious, and good providence, the God of all grace brought the chosen sinner and the appointed Savior together at the time of love.

2.A Work of The Word She came to Christ in faith when she had heard of Jesus (Mar 5:27), not before. No one is ever saved apart from the hearing of Christ, the hearing of the gospel (Rom 10:17; Jas 1:18; 1Pe 1:23-25). God never bypasses the appointed means of grace. There is no need for him to do so.

3.A Work of Grace The grace of God is not verbally mentioned in the text; but it is written all over it. Grace had chosen a certain woman. Grace brought the Lord Jesus to pass her way. Grace caused her to hear about him. And grace gave her faith and wrought faith in her (Eph 1:19; Eph 2:8; Php 1:29; Col 2:12).

4.A Work of Faith This womans faith, like all true faith, was the gift of God. Yet, it was her faith. She chose to come to Christ. She chose to believe on the Son of God. She was made willing in the day of his power; but she was willing. She was caused to come by the sweet constraint of grace; but she did come.

5.A Work of Omnipotence The arm of Gods omnipotent, almighty, irresistible power brought this thing to pass exactly according to his everlasting purpose of love and grace toward this chosen sinner. The virtue that went out of the Savior to this woman was his own omnipotent grace.

The Confession

“And Jesus, immediately knowing in himself that virtue had gone out of him, turned him about in the press, and said, Who touched my clothes? And his disciples said unto him, Thou seest the multitude thronging thee, and sayest thou, Who touched me? And he looked round about to see her that had done this thing. But the woman fearing and trembling, knowing what was done in her, came and fell down before him, and told him all the truth” (Mar 5:30-33).

Our Savior did not ask, Who touched me? because he needed to learn who had done this, but because we need to learn the necessity of confessing Christ before men. With the mouth confession is made unto salvation. This woman came and told the Savior publicly, all the truth. She told the Lord Jesus all about her plague, the power of his grace she experienced within, and the cure his omnipotent mercy had wrought.

In the greatest throng, as well as in the secret place, Robert Hawker wrote, Jesus sees all, knows all, and both appoints and will sanctify all We never can sufficiently admire the abundant tenderness the Lord Jesus manifested upon this occasion, to this poor woman. She wished the cure to be in secret: but no! Jesus will have her faith in him made public. His grace to poor sinners shall be proclaimed thereby; and, her trust in him shall make her history illustrious through endless generations.

It is not needful for us to blow the trumpet in the streets and force others to hear us when they choose not to listen. However, it is required that we identify ourselves with Christ and his gospel publicly. We must not be ashamed to confess Christ before men, both in believers baptism and as his witnesses.

This womans confession did not cause her to be healed any more than the believers confession of Christ causes him to be saved. Our confession of faith in Christ is not a confession made that we might be saved, but a confession made of salvation granted. With our mouths we make confession with reference to the salvation Christ has bestowed.

The Commendation

“And he said unto her, Daughter, thy faith hath made thee whole; go in peace, and be whole of thy plague” (Mar 5:34). Here, our Lord Jesus commends faith, that great work of grace of which he is himself both the Object and the Author. Nothing brings such glory to Christ as that faith which looks to Christ for everything. Nothing is so useful to our souls as faith in Christ. The believers life is a life of faith in Christ. We begin in faith, live by faith, stand in faith, walk by faith, have peace with God by faith, see the glory of God by faith, and die in faith. Nothing is so important as this Dost thou believe on the Son of God?

Yet, the primary object of this miracle is not the womans great faith, but our blessed Saviors great grace. Though at the time unknown to her, the faith she had in him was faith he had given her and had wrought in her by his Spirit (Col 2:12). Obviously, the poor soul thought she had escaped the notice of all; as soon as she touched him, the Master let her know that he both knew her need and performed her cure.

Fuente: Discovering Christ In Selected Books of the Bible

Mat 9:1, Luk 8:40

Reciprocal: Mat 8:18 – unto Mar 4:35 – Let Luk 8:22 – Let

Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge

Chapter 33.

The Woman with the Issue of Blood

“And when Jesus was passed over again by ship unto the other side, much people gathered unto Him: and He was nigh unto the sea. And, behold, there cometh one of the rulers of the synagogue, Jairus by name; and when he saw Him, he fell at His feet, And besought Him greatly, saying, My little daughter lieth at the point of death: I pray thee, come and lay Thy hands on her, that she may be healed; and she shall live. And Jesus went with him; and much people followed Him, and thronged Him. And a certain woman, which had an issue of blood twelve years, And had suffered many things of many physicians, and had spent all that she had, and was nothing bettered, but rather grew worse, When she had heard of Jesus, came in the press behind, and touched His garment. For she said, If I may touch but His clothes, I shall be whole. And straightway the fountain of her blood was dried up; and she felt in her body that she was healed of that plague. And Jesus, immediately knowing in Himself that virtue had gone out of Him, turned Him about in the press, and said, Who touched My clothes? And His disciples said unto Him, Thou seest the multitude thronging Thee, and sayest Thou, Who touched Me? And He looked round about to see her that had done this thing. But the woman fearing and trembling, knowing what was done in her, came and fell down before Him, and told Him all the truth. And He said unto her, Daughter, thy faith hath made thee whole; go in peace, and be whole of thy plague.”-Mar 5:21-34.

The Reception at Capernaum.

There is a great difference between the reception Jesus met with in Gerasa and the reception He met with when He returned to Capernaum, on the other side of the lake. At Gerasa they had begged Him to depart, at Capernaum there was a great crowd waiting to welcome His return. They had been loth to let Him leave them the previous evening, and when, after His rebuff at Gerasa, His boat was sighted steering homeward, they thronged down to the landing-place to give Him greeting. Not that we are to suppose that these people of Capernaum had any real faith in Jesus. Later on, as we shall see, they deserted Him in shoals. But for the moment they had been stirred to something like enthusiasm by the signs which Jesus did. Very likely that enthusiasm had been intensified by the news of what had happened on the lake the previous evening. For, as Mark reminds us, there were other boats beside the one in which Jesus sailed, out in that wild storm, and some of them, no doubt, had returned to Capernaum and told the story of how Jesus at a word had stilled the tempest and rescued them out of deadly peril. All this had added to the excitement in Capernaum, and intensified the eagerness with which Christ’s return was anticipated.

-Produced by Gratitude.

But I think I should be doing an injustice to the crowd on the shore that morning if I said that it was merely excitement that had gathered them together. I think there were some there who had been brought there by gratitude. There were some in Capernaum who owed all their hope and happiness in life to Jesus. Mark tells us the stories of some of them. There was the possessed man whom Christ healed in the synagogue; and Simon’s wife’s mother; and the young man who had been cured of the palsy; and that unnamed multitude who had been brought to Christ’s door after the sun had set on the Sabbath, on whom He had exercised His healing mercy. I believe these folk, with their dear ones, were in that crowd, eager to welcome their Deliverer.

-And by Hope.

There were others in the crowd drawn thither by a wistful hope. It was not that they had already received blessing, but they wanted blessing. They had great sorrows in their souls; great burdens on their hearts; and they were waiting there for Christ with some kind of trembling hope that He might remove them. It is with two of these folk, drawn to Christ by their need, that the rest of the chapter deals.

The first of them was Jairus, the ruler of the synagogue, whose trouble was that his little daughter was at the point of death. The other was a woman who had suffered for twelve years from a serious disease that had baffled all the efforts of the doctors to cure, or even to alleviate it. Jairus was the first to make his sorrow known to Jesus; but the suffering woman was the first to experience His healing power. For as He was walking along to Jairus’ house, this woman “touched Him in the press, and healing virtue stole.” Let us think first of this episode by the way, leaving the story of Jairus’ daughter for subsequent consideration.

Sorrow Revealing itself to Sympathy.

Before, however, I address myself to the incident itself, I want to call your attention to the way in which Jesus brought the sorrow of any place to the surface. People never knew how many sick folk, leprous folk, possessed folk, there were in any district until Jesus came. But the coming of the Healer brought all the hidden misery and heartache and suffering into full view. It is to the man of sympathetic soul and healing grace that misery reveals itself. You may walk through any town with careless heart, and see little or nothing of its pain. You may, indeed, report that there is no pain or sorrow there, that it is a town of gaiety and pleasure. But if people once begin to realise you have a sympathetic heart, if they once discover you have some of the Spirit of Jesus, you shall find there are sorrows and sufferings at your very doors.

Sorrow Urging Sufferers to Christ.

Notice once again, not only how Christ draws the sorrow to the surface, but how sorrow drives people to Christ. Probably I am doing neither Jairus nor this woman an injustice when I say that I do not think anything but their desperate and apparently hopeless need would have driven them to Jesus. Jairus was a ruler of the synagogue. He was a man in high official and social station. He belonged moreover to the Pharisees-to that class which had already taken up an attitude of hostility to Jesus. It required a good deal to make Jairus beg a favour of the prophet of Nazareth; he had to pocket a great deal of pride. Indeed, the only thing that made him do it was this-his little daughter was at the point of death.

So, again, with this woman. Tradition says that her name was Veronica, and that she came from Csarea Philippi. The tradition has in all probability a basis of truth. It is nearly certain that the woman was a Gentile. If she had been a Jewess, she would never, suffering as she did, have ventured into a crowd, and so infected with ceremonial uncleanness every one she touched. The probability is that the far-borne fame of Jesus had reached her in her Gentile home, and the resolve had risen in her heart that she would give this Jesus, the Healer, a trial. But it was as a last resort. If the doctors of Csarea could have done anything for her, she would never have sought the help of Jesus. It was only because they had tried every nostrum they knew, and yet left her no better, but rather worse, that she made her way to Capernaum. Jesus was a last resource.

-As Now.

And still sorrow and trouble drive people to Jesus. With multitudes He is still a last resort. If sorrow never visited them, they would feel no need of Jesus. If they could find some other cure for their hurt, they would never seek his help. It is only when they find that nothing on earth can give the guilty conscience peace, or take away its stain; it is only when they find that no earthly help avails, in face of the tragic sorrows and losses of life, that they turn to Jesus, and cry, “Thou Son of David, have mercy on me!” The miracle of grace is this-Jesus never turns such applicants away. He knew Jairus would never have sought His help if he could have found help somewhere else; He knew this woman would never have come to Him, if she could have got a doctor to cure her; He knew He was the last resort. And yet He cherished no resentment. In both cases He answered prayer. And though still it is only the failure of every other supposed source of help and healing that drives men to Jesus, though they seek Him last, and come to Him late, He has no word of reproach; He drives no one away. Unwearied in forgiveness, still His heart can only love.

The Lord’s Goodness by the Way.

But now to come to this woman’s story. Christ’s goodness to this poor afflicted soul was an act of goodness by the way. He was going to Jairus’ house, with a great crowd accompanying Him, when this woman edged her way past one and the other, until, stretching a trembling hand, she was able to touch the blue tassel of the garment of Jesus. And immediately she knew in her body that she was healed of her plague. It was the succour of Jairus’ little daughter that Jesus had in his mind. The healing of this sick woman was-shall I say?-an incidental act of beneficence. It was goodness by the way.

-Not a Solitary Act.

Not a few of His acts of grace were so done. He was on the way to Jerusalem when those ten lepers (Luk 17:12), greeted Him with their piteous appeal for cleansing; and the urgency of His journey could not prevent Him from answering their prayer. Later on, in that solemn journey when His heart was full of what was going to happen to Him at Jerusalem, when He was absorbed in the thought of that great sacrifice He was to offer up for the sins of the world, He was greeted by the cries of the two blind beggars (Mat 20:30), outside Jericho’s gate; the crowd would have hushed their cries, from some vague feeling that Jesus was occupied with great things, and ought not to be disturbed by the cases of the two blind beggars. But He commanded them to be brought, and healed them by the way; He was so full of kindness and goodness that it overflowed, and lavished itself upon all who came within His reach.

Do we Seize such Opportunities?

Do we practise this wayside goodness? I am not afraid of the neglect of great opportunities; but I wonder sometimes whether we take advantage of all the small opportunities that present themselves by the way. What struck me most in reading Sir Stevenson A. Blackwood’s Life was the amount of good he did by the way. When travelling up and down the country on Post Office business, when representing England in great Congresses abroad, he was always on the look-out for opportunities of service by the way. His fellow-passengers in railway trains, and servants at the houses in which he stayed, all have reason to bless God for this wayside goodness. Are we on the look-out for it? Do we buy up these opportunities? If we will but look out for them, every day brings with it opportunities of saying a kindly word, and doing some gracious deed which may come with healing virtue to some sick and despairing soul.

The Cost of Mercy.

It was on the way to Jairus’ house that Jesus did this kindly deed, and He knew when the deed was done. He perceived, the Authorised Version puts it, “that virtue had gone out of Him.” He perceived, says the Revised Version, a little more accurately, that the power proceeding from Him “had gone forth.” There was always power going forth from Jesus; healing and saving influences were continually streaming from Him, and He perceived that this saving power had exercised itself at that particular moment. What have we here? What I will venture to call the cost of mercy. Doing good is no cheap and easy business. It costs something. There is no doing good without expense, without paying the price. We are apt to think that these miracles of healing which Jesus performed cost Him nothing-that it was merely a case of a word or a wave of the hand. But that is not how I read the Gospel story. Every miracle had its cost. “Himself took our infirmities, and bare our sicknesses”… says St Matthew (Mat 7:17). He felt the dire ills that affected other men as if they were His own. And He was able to remove them only by what was virtually an impartation of His own life. The Cross, indeed, is in a sense a parable of every miracle, and every miracle is a type of the Cross. Just as Jesus could quicken those who were dead in trespasses and sins by the laying down of His own life, so He could only bring healing to the leprous and the diseased by the expenditure of vital force. Christ’s goodness cost Him a price.

The Personal Effect in Goodness.

The goodness that is healing and redemptive, always costs. There are a great many people who try to do good on the cheap. They give their money to this cause and that, and there is an end of it. But there is no redeeming quality in goodness of that kind. If you want to do real good, you must give more than money; you must give yourself. Virtue must go out from you. There is no redeeming quality in money; it is pity and sympathy and love that redeem.

Pressure and the Touch of Faith.

It was the consciousness of this drain upon His powers that made Christ turn about and ask, “Who touched My garments?” To the disciples it seemed an absurd question, seeing that on every side the people were crowding on to Him. “Thou seest the multitude thronging Thee,” they protested “and sayest thou, Who touched Me?” (Mar 5:31). But Jesus knew that while many were in physical contact with Him, some one had touched Him with the touch of faith. There is all the difference in the world between thronging and crowding on Christ and thus, in faith, touching Him. Many rudely press upon Christ’s body, says Augustine; few touch Him to their salvation. It is possible to come into closest contact with Christ and receive no blessing. Many do so come into contact with Him. The forces of custom, for instance, bring people to the service of the Church; they impel them to read their Bible; they perhaps lead them even to the table of the Lord. But Worship and the Word and the Sacrament profit them nothing, because they have no sense of need, and have come not expecting a blessing. But let a man touch Christ, let him reach out the trembling hand of even a timid faith, and seek Christ for the blessing He alone can give, and, though he be a publican or a dying thief, Christ’s saving power will be exercised upon him.

The Woman’s Blessing.

“Who touched Me?” Jesus said (Mar 5:31). “But the woman, fearing and trembling, knowing what had been done to her, came and fell down before Him, and told Him all the truth” (Mar 5:33, R.V.). The woman thought to have stolen away unnoticed. But Jesus insisted on discovering her. It was, as Dr. David Smith says, natural modesty that made her court concealment. At first sight it seems harsh and almost cruel that He should have dragged her forward, and compelled her to divulge her secret in the presence of the crowd. Why did He do it? For Jesus could not really be cruel, and He certainly never did this thing for His own glorification. The author I have just referred to gives the answer. “Had she been suffered to steal away, she would have lost the chief blessing of her life. She would have gained the healing of her body, but she would have missed the healing of her soul. She would have proved the power of Jesus, but she would have remained a stranger to His love. For look what He said to her, as she lay there fearing and trembling at His feet: “Daughter”-He had never addressed any woman by that gracious name before-“thy faith hath made thee whole; go in peace” (Mar 5:34). If I know anything about human nature, I know this, that that woman would thank God all her days that she could not be hid. It was worth while to be put to shame in the eyes of the crowd, to hear that gracious word from the lips of Christ: “Thy faith hath made thee whole.”

-Even though her Faith was Imperfect.

Yet this woman’s faith was not great. The commentators are all able to point out its flaws. It was a timid faith, for it only enabled the woman to stretch a stealthy hand, and touch Christ in the throng. It was not equal to the task of sending her openly to Jesus. And it was a very superstitious faith, for she evidently thought there was some kind of magical efficacy in the mere touch of Jesus. But it was faith, nevertheless, and it was richly rewarded. Even our imperfect faith brings its blessing. The faith that can only cry, “Help mine unbelief 1” does not fail of its reward. When Sir James Simpson lay dying, a friend said to him that soon, like John the beloved disciple at the Last Supper, “he might rest on the bosom of Jesus.” “I don’t know that I can quite do that,” he replied, “but I think I have got hold of the hem of His garment.” Perhaps some of us have no very firm grip. We have only stretched out a timid hand, but even that may draw from Our Saviour the words of forgiveness and blessing.

Fuente: The Gospel According to St. Mark: A Devotional Commentary

1

Jesus returned to the western shore of Galilee, and, as usual, the crowds began to gather about him, doubtless with various motives.

Fuente: Combined Bible Commentary

THE main subject of these verses is the miraculous healing of a sick woman. Great is our Lord’s experience in cases of disease! Great is his sympathy with His sick and ailing members! The gods of the heathen are generally represented as terrible and mighty in battle, delighting in bloodshed, the strong man’s patrons, and the warrior’s friends. The Savior of the Christian is always set before us as gentle, and easy to be entreated, the healer of the broken hearted, the refuge of the weak and helpless, the comforter of the distressed, the sick man’s best friend. And is not this just the Savior that human nature needs? The world is full of pain and trouble. The weak on earth are far more numerous than the strong.

Let us mark, in these verses, what misery sin has brought into the world. We read of one who had had a most painful disease “for twelve years.” She had “suffered many things of many physicians, and had spent all that she had, and was nothing bettered, but rather grew worse.” Means of every kind had been tried in vain. Medical skill had proved unable to cure. Twelve long weary years had been spent in battling with disease, and relief seemed no nearer than at first. “Hope deferred” might well “make her heart sick.” (Pro 13:12.)

How marvellous it is that we do not hate sin more than we do! Sin is the cause of all the pain and disease in the world. God did not create man to be an ailing and suffering creature. It was sin, and nothing but sin, which brought in all the ills that flesh is heir to. It was sin to which we owe every racking pain, and every loathsome infirmity, and every humbling weakness to which our poor bodies are liable. Let us keep this ever in mind. Let us hate sin with a godly hatred.

Let us mark, in the second place, how different are the feelings with which people draw near to Christ. We are told in these verses that “much people followed” our Lord, “and thronged him.” But we are only told of one person who “came in the press behind,” and touched Him with faith and was healed. Many followed Jesus from curiosity, and derived no benefit from Him. One, and only one, followed under a deep sense of her need, and of our Savior’s power to relieve her, and that one received a mighty blessing.

We see the same thing going on continually in the Church of Christ at the present day. Multitudes go to our places of worship, and fill our pews. Hundreds come up to the Lord’s table, and receive the bread and wine. But of all these worshipers and communicants, how few really obtain anything from Christ! Fashion, custom, form, habit, the love of excitement, or an itching ear, are the true motives of the vast majority. There are but few here and there who touch Christ by faith, and go home “in peace.” These may seem hard sayings. But they are unhappily too true!

Let us mark, in the third place, how immediate and instantaneous was the cure which this woman received. No sooner did she touch our Lord’s clothes than she was healed. The thing that she had sought in vain for twelve years, was done in a moment. The cure that many physicians could not effect, was wrought in an instant of time. “She felt in her body that she was healed of that plague.”

We need not doubt that we are meant to see here an emblem of the relief that the Gospel confers on souls. The experience of many a weary conscience has been exactly like that of this woman with her disease. Many a man has spent sorrowful years in search of peace with God, and failed to find it. He has gone to earthly remedies and obtained no relief. He has wearied himself in going from place to place, and church to church, and has felt after all “nothing bettered, but rather worse.” But at last he has found rest.-And where has he found it?-He has found it, where this woman found hers, in Jesus Christ. He has ceased from his own works. He has given over looking to his own endeavors and doings for relief. He has come to Christ Himself, as a humble sinner, and committed himself to His mercy. At once the burden has fallen from off his shoulders. Heaviness is turned to joy, and anxiety to peace.-One touch of real faith can do more for the soul than a hundred self-imposed austerities. One look at Jesus is more efficacious than years of sack-cloth and ashes. May we never forget this to our dying day! Personal application to Christ is the real secret of peace with God.

Let us mark, in the fourth place, how much it becomes Christians to confess before men the benefit they receive from Christ. We see that this woman was not allowed to go home, when cured, without her cure being noticed. Our Lord inquired who had touched Him, and “looked round about to see her that had done this thing.” No doubt He knew perfectly the name and history of the woman. He needed not that any should tell Him. But He desired to teach her, and all around Him, that healed souls should make public acknowledgment of mercies received.

There is a lesson here which all true Christians would do well to remember. We are not to be ashamed to confess Christ before men, and to let others know what He has done for our souls. If we have found peace through His blood, and been renewed by His Spirit, we must not shrink from avowing it, on every proper occasion. It is not necessary to blow a trumpet in the streets, and force our experience on everybody’s notice. All that is required is a willingness to acknowledge Christ as our Master, without flinching from the ridicule or persecution which by so doing we may bring on ourselves. More than this is not required; but less than this ought not to content us. If we are ashamed of Jesus before men, He will one day be ashamed of us before His Father and the angels.

Let us mark, in the last place, how precious a grace is faith. “Daughter,” says our Lord to the woman who was healed, “thy faith hath made thee whole: go in peace.”

Of all the Christian graces, none is so frequently mentioned in the New Testament as faith, and none is so highly commended.-No grace brings such glory to Christ. Hope brings an eager expectation of good things to come. Love brings a warm and willing heart. Faith brings an empty hand, receives everything, and can give nothing in return.-No grace is so important to the Christian’s own soul. By faith we begin. By faith we live. By faith we stand. We walk by faith and not by sight. By faith we overcome. By faith we have peace. By faith we enter into rest.-No grace should be the subject of so much self-inquiry. We should often ask ourselves, Do I really believe? Is my faith true, genuine, and the gift of God?

May we never rest till we can give a satisfactory answer to these questions! Christ is not changed since the day when this woman was healed. He is still gracious and still mighty to save. There is but one thing needful if we want salvation. That one thing is the hand of faith. Let a man only “touch” Jesus, and he shall be made whole. [Footnote: Some remarks of Melancthon’s on this woman’s case are worth reading. We are doubtless to be careful that we do not hastily attach an allegorical and mystical sense to the words of Scripture. Yet we must not forget the depth of meaning which lies in all the acts of our Lord’s earthly ministry; and at any rate there is much beauty in the thoughts which the good Reformer expresses. He says, “This woman doth aptly represent the Jewish synagogue vexed a long time with many mischiefs and miseries, especially tortured with unconscionable princes, and unskilful priests, or physicians of the soul, the Pharisees and Sadducees; on whom she had wasted all her goods, and yet she was not a whit better, but rather much worse, till the blessed Lord of Israel in his own person came to ‘visit and redeem her.’ “]

Fuente: Ryle’s Expository Thoughts on the Gospels

Mar 5:21. A great multitude was gathered unto him. Comp. Luk 8:40. The night after the discourse was probably passed on the lake, so that this was the day after; possibly the second day.

By the sea side. He resumed His teaching there. We disconnect this verse from what follows. See note on next section.

Fuente: A Popular Commentary on the New Testament

Observe here, 1. The person who came to Christ on behalf of his sick daughter, described by his name Jairus; by his office, a ruler of the synagogue; by his gesture, he fell down at Jesus’s feet and worshipped him. This gesture of his was not only a sign of tender affection in him towards his daughter, but also an evidence of his faith in our blessed Saviour; yet his confining Christ’s power to his bodily presence, and to the touch of his hand, was a token of the weakness of his faith: Come, says he, and lay thine hand upon her, and she shall live. As if Christ could not have cured her without either coming to her, or laying his hand upon her.

Note, All that come to Christ are not alike strong in faith. Yet our blessed Redeemer refuses none who come to him with a sincere faith, though in much weakness of faith.

Observe, 2. How readily our Saviour complies with Jairus’s request; Jesus went with him. Although his faith was but weak, yet our Saviour doth not reject him, or deny his suit, but readily goes with him.

Learn hence, How ready we should by to go to Christ in all our distresses, afflictions, and necessities, who is so ready to hear and so forward to help us, if we seek him in sincerity, though our faith be feeble.

Observe, 3. The great humility of our blessed Saviour in suffering himself to be thronged by poor people: Much people followed him, and thronged him. O humble and lowly Saviour! How free was thy conversation from pride and haughtiness: how willing to converse with the meanest of the people for their advantage! Our Lord did not only suffer them to come near him, but even to throng him. What an example is here for the greatest persons upon earth to imitate and follow, not to despise the persons, nor disdain the presence of the meanest and poorest of the people; but to look upon some with an eye of favour, upon others with an eye of pity, upon none with an eye of contempt.

Fuente: Expository Notes with Practical Observations on the New Testament

Verse 21

To the other side; that is, back to the western side, where he ordinarily resided.

Fuente: Abbott’s Illustrated New Testament

21 And when Jesus was passed over again by ship unto the other side, much people gathered unto him: and he was nigh unto the sea. 22 And, behold, there cometh one of the rulers of thesynagogue, Jairus by name; and when he saw him, he fell at his feet, 23 And besought him greatly, saying, My little daughter lieth at the point of death: I pray thee, come and lay thy hands on her, that she may be healed; and she shall live. 24 And Jesus went with him; and much people followed him, and thronged him.

It is at this point that the Lord was interrupted by the woman touching his garment.

Note that this was of the Jewish leadership – a ruler of the synagogue that is falling before the Lord to make request. Do not be deceived into thinking that all Jews had rejected Christ, just the majority. After all the apostles were with him as were many other followers. We will not dwell on the issue, but often times the common folk of God are much more in tune with Him than the leadership. Pastor/leader do not take that as an insult but only as a warning to not reject the common persons insight out of hand. Often it has been observed that the common folk know what is good and practical while the leadership is off in their “Ivory tower” running things with all their grand ideas.

Yes, you may have your degrees, yes you may have a ton of experience, and yes you may know it all, but realize that these folks that pay your check have been around the block a time or two on a more practical level than you and may have picked up some life experience that you have not had the privilage of picking up yet.

I might just mention one illustration that I have mentioned before. A church had just replaced their entire leadership over a few months with young men who seemed to have some great ideas. Indeed many of their ideas were great from what I understand but one was not so great. There was a high-rise in power rates and a sharp decline in church income due to economic pressures in the area. The church had a hot water heating system in the church sanctuary. The system took heated water, mixed it with cold water and then circulated the water through pipes buried in the cement slab floor of the building.

The leaders determined if they would shut the cold water off it would save power heating so much hot water. The old timers of the church warned them aggressively telling them it would damage the system. Not to worry, the youngers are here and off went the cold water. The shock of the high temperature water hitting the pipes popped every connection in the system. The church was required to spend thousands digging up concrete and repairing connections.

Give the men A for “affort” but F for listening to wisdom made available to them.

I am not suggesting either that the common folk always know what is right, but we need to remember we are a “BODY” of believers, not two opposing sides in a battle for power.

Fuente: Mr. D’s Notes on Selected New Testament Books by Stanley Derickson

Having withdrawn from Galilee to the southeastern Decapolis region (Mar 4:35 to Mar 5:20), Jesus and His disciples now returned to the northwestern side of the lake and to Galilee. Immediately a multitude of Jews gathered around Him again.

Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)

CHAPTER 5:21-43 (Mar 5:21-43)

WITH JAIRUS

“And when Jesus had crossed over again in the boat unto the other side, a great multitude was gathered unto Him: and He was by the sea. And there cometh one of the rulers of the synagogue, Jairus by name; and seeing Him, he falleth at His feet, and beseecheth Him much, saying, My little daughter is at the point of death: I pray Thee that Thou come and lay Thy hands on her, that she may be made whole, and live. And He went with him; and a great multitude followed Him, and they thronged Him. And a woman, which had an issue of blood twelve years, and had suffered many things of many physicians, and had spent all that she had, and was nothing bettered, but rather grew worse, having heard the things concerning Jesus, came in the crowd behind, and touched His garment. For she said, If I touch but His garments, I shall be made whole. And straightway the fountain of her blood was dried up; and she felt in her body that she was healed of her plague. And straightway Jesus, perceiving in Himself that the power proceeding from him had gone forth, turned Him about in the crowd, and said, Who touched My garments? And His disciples said unto Him, Thou seest the multitude thronging Thee, and sayest Thou, Who touched Me? And He looked round about to see her that had done this thing. But the woman fearing and trembling, knowing what had been done to her, came and fell down before Him, and told Him all the truth. And He said unto her, Daughter, thy faith hath made thee whole; go in peace, and be whole of thy plague. While He yet spake, they come from the ruler of the synagogue’s house, saying, Thy daughter is dead: why troublest thou the Master any further? But Jesus not heeding the word spoken, saith unto the ruler of the synagogue, Fear not, only believe. And He suffered no man to follow with Him, save Peter, and James, and John the brother of James. And they come to the house of the ruler of the synagogue; and He beholdeth a tumult, and many weeping and wailing greatly. And when He was entered in, He saith unto them, Why make ye a tumult, and weep? the child is not dead, but sleepeth. And they laughed Him to scorn. But He, having put them all forth, taketh the father of the child and her mother and them that were with Him, and goeth in where the child was. And taking the child by the hand, He saith unto her, Talitha cumi; which is, being interpreted, damsel, I say unto thee, Arise. And straightway the damsel rose up, and walked; for she was twelve years old. And they were amazed straightway with a great amazement. And He charged them much that no man should know this; and He commanded that something would be given her to eat.” Mar 5:21-43 (R.V.)

REPULSED from Decapolis, but consoled by the rescue and zeal of the demoniac, Jesus returned to the western shore, and a great multitude assembled. The other boats which were with Him had doubtless spread the tidings of the preternatural calm which rescued them from deadly peril, and it may be that news of the event of Gadara arrived almost as soon as He Whom they celebrated. We have seen that St. Mark aims at bringing the four great miracles of this period into the closest sequence. And so he passes over a certain brief period with the words “He was by the sea.” But in fact Jesus was reasoning with the Pharisees, and with the disciples of John, who had assailed Him and His followers, when one of their natural leaders threw himself at His feet.

The contrast is sharp enough, as He rises from a feast to go to the house of mourning, from eating with publicans and sinners to accompany a ruler of the synagogue. These unexpected calls, these sudden alternations all found Him equally ready to bear the same noble part, in the most dissimilar scenes, and in treating temperaments the most unlike. But the contrast should also be observed between those harsh and hostile critics who hated Him in the interests of dogma and of ceremonial, and Jairus, whose views were theirs, but whose heart was softened by trouble. The danger of his child was what drove him, perhaps reluctantly enough, to beseech Jesus much. And nothing could be more touching than his prayer for his “little daughter,” its sequence broken as if with a sob; wistfully pictorial as to the process, “that Thou come and lay Thy hands upon her,” and dilating wistfully too upon the effect, “that she may be made whole and live.” If a miracle were not in question, the dullest critic in Europe would confess that this exquisite supplication was not composed by an evangelist, but a father. And he would understand also why the very words in their native dialect were not forgotten, which men had heard awake the dead.

As Jesus went with him, a great multitude followed Him, and they thronged Him. It is quite evident that Jesus did not love these gatherings of the idly curious. Partly from such movements He had withdrawn Himself to Gadara; and partly to avoid exciting them He strove to keep many of His miracles a secret. Sensationalism is neither grace nor a means of grace. And it must be considered that the perfect Man, as far from mental apathy or physical insensibility as from morbid fastidiousness, would find much to shrink away from in the pressure of a city crowd. The contact of inferior organizations, selfishness driving back the weak and gentle, vulgar scrutiny and audible comment, and the desire for some miracle as an idle show, which He would only work because His gentle heart was full of pity, all these would be utterly distressing to Him who was

“The first true gentleman that ever breathed,”

as well as the revelation of God in flesh. It is therefore noteworthy that we have many examples of His grace and goodness amid such trying scenes, as when He spoke to Zacchaeus, and called Bartimaeus to Him to be healed. Jesus could be wrathful but He was never irritated. Of these examples one of the most beautiful is here recorded, for as He went with Jairus, amidst the rude and violent thronging crowds, moving alone (as men often are in sympathy and in heart alone amid seething thoroughfares), He suddenly became aware of a touch, the timid and stealthy touch of a broken-hearted woman, pale and wasted with disease, but borne through the crowd by the last effort of despair and the first energy of a newborn hope. She ought not to have come thither, since her touch spread ceremonial uncleanness far and wide. Nor ought she to have stolen a blessing instead of praying for it. And if we seek to blame her still further, we may condemn the superstitious notion that Christ’s gifts of healing were not conscious and loving actions, but a mere contagion of health, by which one might profit unfelt and undiscovered. It is urged indeed that hers was not a faith thus clouded, but so majestic as to believe that Christ would know and respond to the silent hint of a gentle touch. And is it supposed that Jesus would have dragged into publicity such a perfect lily of the vale as this? and what means her trembling confession, and the discovery that she could not be hid? But when our keener intellects have criticized her errors, and our clearer ethics have frowned upon her misconduct, one fact remains. She is the only woman upon whom Jesus is recorded to have bestowed any epithet but a formal one. Her misery and her faith drew from His guarded lips, the tender and yet lofty word Daughter.

So much better is the faith which seeks for blessing, however erroneous be its means, than the heartless propriety which criticizes with most dispassionate clearness, chiefly because it really seeks nothing for itself at all. Such faith is always an appeal, and is responded to, not as she supposed, mechanically, unconsciously, nor, of course, by the opus operatum of a garment touched (or of a sacrament formally received), but by the going forth of power from a conscious Giver, in response to the need which has approached His fullness. He knew her secret and fearful approach to Him, as He knew the guileless heart of Nathaniel, whom He marked beneath the fig-tree. And He dealt with her very gently. Doubtless there are many such concealed woes, secret, untold miseries which eat deep into gentle hearts, and are never spoken, and cannot, like Bartimaeus, cry aloud for public pity. For these also there is a balm in Gilead, and if the Lord requires them to confess Him publicly, He will first give them due strength to do so. This enfeebled and emaciated woman was allowed to feel in her body that she was healed of her plague, before she was called upon for her confession. Jesus asked, Who touched My clothes? It was one thing to press Him, driven forward by the multitude around, as circumstances impel so many to become churchgoers, readers of Scripture, interested in sacred questions and controversies until they are borne as by physical propulsion into the closest contact with our Lord, but not drawn thither by any personal craving or sense of want, nor expecting any blessed reaction of “the power proceeding from Him.” It was another thing to reach out a timid hand and touch appealingly even that tasselled fringe of His garment which had a religious significance, whence perhaps she drew a semi-superstitious hope. In the face of this incident, can any orthodoxy forbid us to believe that the grace of Christ extends, now as of yore, to many a superstitious and erring approach by which souls reach after Christ?

The disciples wondered at His question: they knew not that “the flesh presses but faith touches;” but as He continued to look around and seek her that had done this thing, she fell down and told him all the truth. Fearing and trembling she spoke, for indeed she had been presumptuous, and ventured without permission. But the chief thing was that she had ventured, and so He graciously replied, Daughter, thy faith hath made thee whole, go in peace and be whole of thy plague. Thus she received more than she had asked or thought; not only healing for the body, but also a victory over that self-effacing, fearful, half morbid diffidence, which long and weakening disease entails. Thus also, instead of a secret cure, she was given the open benediction of her Lord, and such confirmation in her privilege as many more would enjoy if only with their mouth confession were made unto salvation.

While He yet spoke, and the heart of Jairus was divided between joy at a new evidence of the power of Christ, and impatience at every moment of delay, not knowing that his Benefactor was the Lord of time itself, the fatal message came, tinged with some little irony as it asked, Why troublest thou the Teacher any more? It is quite certain that Jesus had before now raised the dead, but no miracle of the kind had acquired such prominence as afterwards to claim a place in the Gospel narratives.

One is led to suspect that the care of Jesus had prevailed, and they had not been widely published. To those who brought this message, perhaps no such case had traveled, certainly none had gained their credence. It was in their eyes a thing incredible that He should raise the dead, and indeed there is a wide difference between every other miracle and this. We struggle against all else, but when death comes we feel that all is over except to bury out of our sight what once was beautiful and dear. Death is destiny made visible; it is the irrevocable. Who shall unsay the words of a bleeding heart, I shall go to him but he shall not return to me? But Christ came to destroy him that had the power of death. Even now, through Him, we are partakers of a more intense and deeper life, and have not only the hope but the beginning of immortality. And it was the natural seal upon His lofty mission, that He should publicly raise up the dead. For so great a task, shall we say that Jesus now gathers all His energies? That would be woefully to misread the story; for a grand simplicity, the easy bearing of unstrained and amply adequate resources, is common to all the narratives of life brought back. We shall hereafter see good reason why Jesus employed means for other miracles, and even advanced by stages in the work. But lest we should suppose that effort was necessary, and His power but just sufficed to overcome the resistance, none of these supreme miracles is wrought with the slightest effort. Prophets and apostles may need to stretch themselves upon the bed or to embrace the corpse; Jesus, in His own noble phrase, awakes it out of sleep. A wonderful ease and quietness pervade the narratives, expressing exactly the serene bearing of the Lord of the dead and of the living. There is no holding back, no toying with the sorrow of the bereaved, such as even Euripides, the tenderest of the Greeks, ascribed to the demigod who tore from the grip of death the heroic wife of Admetus. Hercules plays with the husband’s sorrow, suggests the consolation of a new bridal, and extorts the angry cry, “Silence, what have you said? I would not have believed it of you.” But what is natural to a hero, flushed with victory and the sense of patronage, would have ill become the absolute self-possession and gentle grace of Jesus. In every case, therefore, He is full of encouragement and sympathy, even before His work is wrought. To the widow of Nain He says, “Weep not.” He tells the sister of Lazarus, “If thou wilt believe, thou shalt see the salvation of God.” And when these disastrous tidings shake all the faith of Jairus, Jesus loses not a moment in reassuring him: “Fear not, only believe,” He says, not heeding the word spoken; that is to say, Himself unagitated and serene. [Unless indeed the meaning be rather, “over hearing the word,” which is not its force in the New Testament (Mat 18:17, twice)].

In every case some co-operation was expected from the bystanders. The bearers of the widow’s son halted, expectant, when this majestic and tender Wayfarer touched the bier. The friends of Lazarus rolled away the stone from the sepulchre. But the professional mourners in the house of Jairus were callous and insensible, and when He interrupted their clamorous wailing, with the question, Why make ye tumult and weep? they laughed Him to scorn; a fit expression of the world’s purblind incredulity, its reliance upon ordinary “experience” to disprove all possibilities of the extraordinary and Divine, and its heartless transition from conventional sorrow to ghastly laughter, mocking in the presence of death — which is, in its view, so desperate — the last hope of humanity. Laughter is not the fitting mood in which to contradict the Christian hope, that our lost ones are not dead, but sleep. The new and strange hope for humanity which Jesus thus asserted, He went on to prove, but not for them. Exerting that moral ascendency, which sufficed Him twice to cleanse the Temple, He put them all forth, as already He had shut out the crowd, and all His disciples but “the elect of His election,” the three who now first obtain a special privilege. The scene was one of surpassing solemnity and awe; but not more so than that of Nain, or by the tomb of Lazarus. Why then were not only the idly curious and the scornful, but nine of His chosen ones excluded? Surely we may believe, for the sake of the little girl, whose tender grace of unconscious maidenhood should not, in its hour of reawakened vitality, be the centre of a gazing circle. He kept with Him the deeply reverential and the loving, the ripest apostles and the parents of the child, since love and reverence are ever the conditions of real insight. And then, first, was exhibited the gentle and profound regard of Christ for children. He did not arouse her, as others, with a call only, but took her by the hand, while He spoke to her those Aramaic words, so marvelous in their effect, which St. Peter did not fail to repeat to St. Mark as he had heard them, Talitha cumi; Damsel, I say unto thee, Arise. They have an added sweetness when we reflect that the former word, though applied to a very young child, is in its root a variation of the word for a little lamb. How exquisite from the lips of the Good Shepherd, Who gave His life for the sheep. How strange to be thus awakened from the mysterious sleep, and to gaze with a child’s fresh eyes into the loving eyes of Jesus. Let us seek to realize such positions, to comprehend the marvelous heart which they reveal to us, and we shall derive more love and trust from the effort than from all such doctrinal inference and allegorizing as would dry up, into a hortus siccus, the sweetest blooms of the sweetest story ever told.

So shall we understand what happened next in all three cases. Something preternatural and therefore dreadful, appeared to hang about the lives so wondrously restored. The widow of Nain did not dare to embrace her son until Christ “gave him to his mother.” The bystanders did not touch Lazarus, bound hand and foot, until Jesus bade them “loose him and let him go.” And the five who stood about this child’s bed, amazed straightway with a great amazement, had to be reminded that being now in perfect health, after an illness which left her system wholly unsupplied, something should be given her to eat. This is the point at which Euripides could find nothing fitter for Hercules to utter than the awkward boast, “Thou wilt some day say that the son of Jove was a capital guest to entertain.” What a contrast. For Jesus was utterly unflushed, undazzled, apparently unconscious of anything to disturb His composure. And so far was He from the unhappy modern notion, that every act of grace must be proclaimed on the housetop, and every recipient of grace however young, however unmatured, paraded and exhibited, that He charged them much that no man should know this.

The story throughout is graphic and full of character; every touch, every word reveals the Divine Man; and only reluctance to believe a miracle prevents it from proving itself to every candid mind. Whether it be accepted or rejected, it is itself miraculous. It could not have grown up in the soil which generated the early myths and legends, by the working of the ordinary laws of mind. It is beyond their power to invent or to dream, supernatural in the strictest sense.

This miracle completes the cycle. Nature, distracted by the Fall, has revolted against Him in vain. Satan, entrenched in his last stronghold, has resisted, and humbled himself to entreaties and to desperate contrivances, in vain. Secret and unspoken woes, and silent germs of belief, have hidden from Him in vain. Death itself has closed its bony fingers upon its prey, in vain. Nothing can resist the power and love, which are enlisted on behalf of all who put their trust in Jesus.

Fuente: Expositors Bible Commentary