In His World No.7 The Lord of Life & Health

I am the voice of Jesus' name, Brought on to the earth by Christ. Made of the living, only God, Who I read among my brethren. I came to Jesus as I was, Your mercy placed, And He has made me Thine.

I hear Jesus say, Behold, I'm free. Living, only God, Through Jesus I'm free. After that lovely rendering, let's turn in the scriptures to Matthew chapter 9, where we meet again some people who are needy.

Matthew chapter 9. John's disciples had been questioning Jesus about fasting. With the theme of this evening's meeting, you might think that perhaps they could have asked more useful questions. And indeed, while Jesus was answering John's disciples, in Matthew chapter 9 and verse 18, we find a man comes to the Lord who has a real need.

While Jesus was saying this, that is, answering John's disciples, a ruler came and knelt before him and said, My daughter has just died, but come and put your hand on her and she will live. Jesus got up and went with him, and so did his disciples. Just then, a woman who had been subject to bleeding for 12 years came up behind him and touched the edge of his cloak.

She said to herself, If I only touch his cloak, I will be healed. Jesus turned and saw her. Take heart, daughter, he said.

Your faith has healed you. And the woman was healed from that moment. When Jesus entered the ruler's house and saw the flute players and the noisy crowd, he said, Go away.

The girl is not dead but asleep. But they laughed at him. After the crowd had been put outside, he went in and took the girl by the hand, and she got up.

News of this spread through all that region. As Jesus went on from there, two blind men followed him, calling out, Have mercy on us, son of David. When he had gone indoors, the blind men came to him, and he asked them, Do you believe that I am able to do this? Yes, Lord, they replied.

Then he touched their eyes and said, According to your faith will it be done to you. And their sight was restored. Jesus warned them sternly, See that no one knows about this.

But they went out and spread the news about him over all that region. While they were going out, a man who was demon-possessed and could not talk was brought to Jesus. And when the demon was driven out, the man who had been mute spoke.

The crowd was amazed and said, Nothing like this has ever been seen in Israel. But the Pharisees said, It is by the prince of demons that he drives out demons. Jesus went through all the towns and villages, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the good news of the kingdom, and healing every disease and sickness.

When he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. Then he said to his disciples, The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field.

May the Lord bless that reading of the scriptures to our hearts. We thank you, Father, for the authority of scripture. We want to praise you that not only is it an accurate word, but it is a living word.

Not only was it spoken yesteryear, but it is still being spoken today. May it come fresh to our ears. May it stimulate our minds.

May it captivate our wills. May it warm our emotions. And may we go beyond the word to the giver of the word, and hear not only his voice, but feel his touch.

Amen. Amen. Now let's have your Bibles open at Matthew's Gospel in chapter 9. Brother Derek read more verses than actually we're going to be looking at, for we'll concentrate our attention from the 18th through to the 26th verses of Matthew 9. We're going to be talking about the Lord of life and health.

Aren't you glad that our Lord Jesus never had such a thing as a filofax thrust on him? And yet if someone did a time management study of the way that he handled his diary, then a great deal could be learned. Do you ever get into what we call in Sheffield a tiz? That's really like a young dog chasing its tail, making a lot of speed and expending a lot of energy, but getting nowhere. Our Lord Jesus was not like that.

Somebody made a bomb, colloquially speaking, a lot of money in America, by actually doing a time management survey in one of the leading companies, and the managing director said, look, I must get more out of my diary, more out of my life than I'm doing at this moment. Can you help me? And the consultant actually gave him, as he was speaking personally just to this man, not to the whole firm, he gave him some very excellent advice, extremely simple. He said, before you go to sleep, let the last thing you do at night be this.

Make a list of the ten most important things that you need to do tomorrow. And then when tomorrow comes, you've got your plan as to how to spend your hours achieving those goals. Now there's something to be said for that.

And I want to suggest to you that though our Lord Jesus was not tyrannized by time, not tyrannized by his diary, he knew how to handle every day of every week of every month of every year so that it was chock-a-block full attaining what the Father brought him on earth to do, and yet he knew sometimes what I find very difficult to know how. He knew to say no. He could back off and take a break and not have a guilt trip as a result.

He could have important duties and yet let someone else steal in across his path and not in any sense be inattentive simply because his prescribed curriculum for that day had been interfered with. Now you get a good example of the way that our Lord spent his time, how he coped with the unpredictable. Now he ministered as both the Lord of life and health in this snippet of verses that we've been looking at together, at least that we've heard together, a snippet of the life of our Lord Jesus.

But we're not just engaged in historical study. The reason why I ask that that early hymn should be sung, that even ere the sun was set, the sick old Lord around thee lay, was simply because I believe that the biblical picture of our Lord Jesus and ministering to the needs of ordinary folk 2,000 years ago is the present picture. He's still alive and he's still ministering to needs.

And what we're after is not the pursuit of the historical Jesus, though that in itself is a valid study, but it's the pursuit of the contemporary Jesus, how this Jesus ministers to ordinary folk who might be in the similar condition, if not exactly, certainly in principle, as these two people who come across the pathway of our Lord and enlist his attention during this part of his ministry. Jesus does have time for me. If it wouldn't be too simplistic, I think I would be asking you to repeat that.

I want you to go from the tab this evening, whether you've not been here before, whether these things are quite strange to you, I'd like you to go out of the tab this evening convinced Jesus does have time for you. Here is a double healing. Here is a story that takes some 30 verses or thereabouts in Mark's gospel to tell, and yet Matthew compresses them into nine verses.

He ruthlessly cuts aside a lot of the information that you find in the parallel narrative in other gospels and brings out the salient features. He tells us just about a man. He doesn't name the man whose daughter is terminally sick.

He tells us about a woman who also has got great problems, and actually though Matthew doesn't concede the information, she spent an awful amount of her money trying to get help from the physicians in those days. And both these people, cloaked in anonymity, perhaps deliberately so by Matthew, inspired by the Spirit so that you can read yourself into the character, both these people discover that the Lord Jesus has time for them. The man who we first come across is obviously a very important man.

He is a ruler. Actually, he is a ruler of a synagogue, which means I suppose that in effect he is equivalent to a pastor or one of the elders of the church. His problem, as I've touched on, is that his daughter has died.

But he has incredible faith that the Lord Jesus can put out his hand and heal her. Actually, if you take Mark's run of events, you discover that the problem was two stages, or had two stages. First, the daughter was sick, very, very sick.

And Jesus was informed about that. Then he's interrupted. And the next thing you hear about this man's daughter is that not only is she sick, she is dead.

And if he still believes that the Lord Jesus can help him at all, then he is showing a faith that is superior to that of the centurion of whom you read earlier on in these verses who also came to the Lord Jesus because he was concerned about a sick servant. Have you got a lot of patience? Do you know what I find to be the most infuriating thing or one of the most infuriating things in life? It's when you go into a shop or a garage and suddenly the telephone rings. And they turn away from you, who physically were there first, and deal with a telephone inquiry which you feel is less important than yours.

And if it was more important, why didn't they actually come? The Yorkshire blood that's in my veins almost reaches the point where it's going to burst out of them when that happens. I am not essentially, naturally a patient person. Are you? The attention of Jesus has been arrested by this man whose daughter is so very sick.

And he's got time to move towards where the man lives, presumably to minister to the girl. And just then, verse 20, a woman who has been subject to bleeding for 12 years comes up behind him and touches the edge of his cloak. And Jesus stops.

And if I'd been the man whose name actually was Jairus, if I had been Jairus, I would have been so annoyed with this woman. I was there first. I booked my appointment.

I gained the attention of Jesus. Then why shouldn't he immediately go and do what I want him to do? Some of you last Sunday evening, I speak with love, were perhaps a little perplexed in our communion service when I opened up the service and two or three people started to pray all at once. You remember you were bringing sick folk to the Lord? And I felt that one or two of you were getting a little agitated and so I chipped in and said, don't get worried that more than one person is talking because God can cope.

That was a great revelation, a prophetic word. God can cope. No one else has ever concluded this in a pulpit before.

God, he can cope. And I remembered that massive church congregation in Korea where they're all standing up, the thousands of them, letting Rupert one go, bringing their request to the Lord. And I thought, well, if the Lord could manage that, then he could manage half a dozen or so speaking at the same time in Worthingtown.

If the exchange in London, the telephone exchange, can handle thousands and thousands of calls, how much more our God can handle calls on his time even when it seems as though one is pushing out the other in terms of importance. Have you noticed that when you talk or when you look at this particular lady who gets in after this ruler and gains the attention of our Lord Jesus, have you thought how very much she resembles a lot of us? She's a loser, isn't she? I mean, physically she's a loser. She's been losing blood.

She's hemorrhaged for years. A desperate condition to be constantly sick, isn't it? You know, I do ask that you young folk who perhaps have had a good bill of health thus far, that you have always a sensitivity to people who are sick, particularly elderly folk. It's a horrible thing to have to cope with pain day after day, to lose blood and to be, as a result, without the strength and the energy that you need.

But there are other ways of losing things in life. There are other ways in which you can illustrate that word loser as descriptive of a person. Some folks, well, for them the chips always fell in the wrong places.

The lines were badly drawn as far as the path of their life was concerned. Some of us have had it so easy. I speak of one of them and I feel sometimes so terribly guilty simply because I had a good home, a good mum and a good dad and I know that there are people in Worthington who never had those benefits, who were losers.

But Jesus has time for losers as he stopped to listen to this woman in her extreme condition. As in our little summer house, that's what I call it, other people rudely call it a hut. It's not a hut, it's a summer house, in our garden late last night.

A phone call comes through, it's from my mum, to ask me to pray. Quite an influential member of the police force in the north. I just contacted her to ask if in turn she'd contact me because her mother is hemorrhaging and feels she has cancer and has taken to the bottle, as many folks are tempted so to do in those extreme conditions.

And I want to tell you that of that lady and of those in my congregation here this evening who perhaps are losers, Jesus has time for you. This woman was an outcast. It says in the Scriptures that she came up behind him.

No time to go into the reason, but the Mosaic law indicates that a woman in her condition is actually unclean. I can understand why folk don't want to come into Worthington. I can understand the great leap that it is for someone who never comes to church to make their way through those doors and come into our sanctuary.

It's not easy to feel comfortable in a so-called religious environment. And here is this woman, and she finds it difficult also to approach the Lord Jesus because of the fact that she's been losing physically blood for these many years. She's pronounced unclean.

She's not wanted by society. I want to tell you it doesn't matter how you come to Jesus, from behind, from in front, from the side, or whether they drop you through a hole in the roof as they did with one man, as long as you get into his presence. Be still, for the presence of the Lord is in this place, God-granted.

She touched the fringe because she was unsure, unsure as to the rights that she had to contact this great man. But let me tell you that if you can only touch the fringe of the garment of our Lord Jesus, if your hand is trembling and if you feel out of place, that doesn't really matter. It's not good theological contact and full understanding and a grasp of the Old Testament and the New Testament and the doctrine of the atonement and all the rest of the marvelous teachings in this book that is the prerequisite to have an audience with Jesus.

It's just to reach out and touch, make contact with Him. Amen. It seemed to be a rotten stroke of luck as far as she was concerned that Jairus, the ruler of the synagogue, got in first.

After all, he must have been a man of speech and this woman can't speak. She'll talk to herself, but she will not articulate her longings. She's representative of many a person who find it so very difficult to break the silence in a prayer meeting.

And I understand something of this. Now that I was sixteen years of age, if you put me in a room with more than twelve people, I wanted to rush out in panic. I felt so insecure and so uncertain.

You told me then that the days would come when I would be addressing congregations. I would have laughed you to scorn. She said to herself, she's inarticulate, but if only I can touch His cloak, I will be healed.

I was talking to a dear girl, I don't know whether she's here this evening, from Belgium, in our picnic this afternoon. I told her that before I became a pastor, I was an English teacher. Perhaps because of that particular calling.

I love the English language. I remember Brother Eric Land, who was a great orator, my predecessor, used to tell me that at times he'd just read the dictionary. I thought of reading the dictionary.

That's how he could manage with the brilliance that God gave him, the words that fell from his lips and sway congregations within the power of the Spirit. Words have always been something that I've been attracted to, and particularly the words of Jesus, and not only how He formed them, but I like to muse upon how He used to pronounce them, the intonation. Jesus turns, verse 22, as He sees her, and He says, Take heart, daughter.

Can you think of something more apposite for our Lord Jesus to use in terms of a reassuring comment than these three words? Take heart, daughter. I'm not being sentimental when I suggest to you that maybe those are the three words that God is speaking to some person here in the tab right now. Take heart.

Born a loser? Feeling an outcast? Unsure? Unable to string words together? Jesus understands about these conditions. It was for that sort of person that He comes. And so He'll put on side His prior commitment to Jairus in order to deal with this lady and to meet her need.

Take heart, daughter. He said, Your faith has healed you. He links her request to the faith that she indicates, even though it be a faltering little bit of faith.

That faith in me has healed you. So Jesus speaks the word of cleansing, and the woman was healed instantaneously. I do believe that God can staunch the hemorrhage of the lady who sent a prayer request to us by her police daughter last night.

I do not believe that in these stories relating the ministry, the healing ministry of our Lord Jesus, there are only salvation principles to be extracted. I withdraw the word only because those are vital principles. His touch is still its ancient power.

He is able still to authenticate His sovereignty as the Lord of health within His providence and within His will. Now, according to Mark, Jairus is placed in a worse condition because Jesus has allowed this interlude. You see, in the longer version, as I mentioned, Mark tells you that the daughter is ill.

Then Jesus takes time to deal with the woman. Then more servants come to Jairus and say, don't trouble the master anymore, it's all over. But Jairus is to have faith in the Lord Jesus as you and I need to have faith in Him.

Carlyle once said, it's the slowness of God that gets me. You know, I sympathize with that. I want the answer to my prayer yesterday.

And even that's a bit late. But the Lord Jesus is completely in control of every situation. And so the Lord has allowed the problems of Jairus to get worse simply because He's ameliorated the difficulty.

Indeed, He's eliminated the difficulty of this woman. So in this Preciate account, we find Jesus now actually on the doorstep of the ruler's house. They've already formed tribes, or the equivalent.

But for those who are not in the know because you don't have the blessings of living in Worthing, there are funeral agents. At least two of them. Good ones too.

They've got the funeral people and there they provide not only a service in terms of what to do with the body, but you know, they've got the mourners. Professional mourners. According to the law, you're to have not less than two flutes and one wailing woman for it to be a proper funeral service.

When I say the law, I don't mean the law of Moses. It was Jewish tradition, rabbinic law, oral law. Well, presumably because he's the ruler of a synagogue, a pastor, a very important man, so he must have half a dozen flutes and maybe half a dozen wailing women.

Our Lord's not very impressed about professional mourning because there's nothing artificial about the emotions of Jesus. And these people who are mourning one minute can laugh another, can't they? Laugh in scorn. When Jesus says the girl is not dead but asleep, then at the end of verse 24 you get Matthew's comment, they laughed at him.

So he has them out of the situation. And he moves in. Mark will tell us that he moves in with three of his disciples.

Here he seems much more like Elijah and Elisha going into the room of a dead child and speaking to the corpse. He goes and takes the girl by the hand and she got up. Some believe that it was resuscitation.

I don't know. It seems to me from the comment that our Lord sent to John the Baptist in the 11th chapter, references made. He says, Go back and report to John verse 4 what you hear and see.

The blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cured, the deaf hear, the dead are raised. And the good news is preached to the poor. It seems to me that this lady, this young woman, was actually dead, but she hadn't been handed over, if you like, to the abyss of death.

So our Lord could end it, bring her back to life. And as a result of this, she got up. Mark's Gospel will tell you that our Lord, in His very homely fashion, said she needs something to eat.

Isn't that wonderful? I really do just marvel at Jesus. I tell you many, many times from this pulpit, this man fascinates me. You see, I would have thought that having done this, you wouldn't have bothered about ordering some sandwiches and a drink.

But then that's the callousness and the insensitivity of somebody like me. But not our Lord Jesus. He's full-orbed in His salvation.

I mean, it's only Jesus who can give you the Father's prayer, our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread.

I mean, would you have put that little bit in after all those illustrious comments about the greatness and the grandeur and the characteristics of God? Give us this day our daily bread. But that's Jesus, isn't it? He's always so delightfully, absurdly practical. So having dealt with the needs of this family, and having dealt with the needs of Jairus, He orders breakfast or lunch or supper or whatever it was for this girl.

And news. News of this spread through all the region. In anticipation of the further comment in Matthew, just drop your eyes down to the thirty-third verse in the last sentence or so, the crowd was amazed and said, nothing like this has ever been seen in Israel.

Yes. He's the Lord of life. He's the Lord of health.

And He's still the same Lord today. He can meet your need. That's why He came into the world.

All the blessings that you discover in His earthly ministry during those three years prior to the crucifixion are sort of a prelude, a build-up. Because He's going to release even greater power into this world after He dies and after He's raised again and He ascends into heaven. And there at the Father's right hand, He causes His Spirit, the blessed Holy Spirit, to be poured down upon the church, upon His body.

And the Acts of the Apostles is a continuation of the Acts of Jesus Christ. The greatest miracle is salvation, that is true. Never will you get me to acknowledge anything else.

For a man to be saved, for a woman to know that sins are forgiven, that is bliss indeed. And that's the main objective of the gospel. But within the providence of God there are overflowing blessings.

And our Lord Jesus, within His sovereignty and within His power and within His will, can quicken and cleanse our bodies, can free within His grace from pain. We can pray for the sick. We can minister to one another.

We can bear each other's burdens. Because this is what our Lord Jesus told us to do. Is He the physician of your soul? Do you know you're saved? Have you pain? Have you physical problems? Did you ask Him about it before you went to the doctor? Nothing the matter with going to the doctor.

But I sometimes wonder why the doctor gets in first. And if you say it's not the will of God for you to be healed then don't go to the doctor because the doctor doesn't want to put you out of the will of God, does he? I'm a Christian doctor anyway. We go to our Lord with our physical problems.

We go to our Lord with our spiritual problems. And by His grace, He's able to meet all our needs. Let's stand and sing that little song once again.

Be still, for the presence of the Lord is in this place. Just that third verse, 1-6-0. Be still, for the presence of the Lord is in this place.

Let's just listen to the piano playing that and let's bring to the Lord any physical need that you may have or loved ones within your knowledge have. Let's just ask for God to quicken with a healing touch. Let's sing that grand old hymn, Abide With Me.

Fast falls the even tide. So may grace, mercy, and peace from Father, Son, and Holy Spirit be our abiding portion always. Amen.