Title: A Hurting Woman Finds Help
Bible Book: Mark 5 : 25-34
Author: Paul E. Brown
Subject: Faith; Healing; Power of Jesus
Objective:
Introduction
This account is also recorded in Matthew 9:20-22 and Luke 8:43-48. This story reminds us that regardless of how extreme a person’s predicament may be, and regardless of how deep may be a person’s pain, that individual can find help in the Lord. Thus, I pray that you will find hope and encouragement in the story of this woman.
I. The Woman's Plight
In verses 25-26 we read, “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, was nothing bettered, but rather grew worse.”
This woman had been hemorrhaging for twelve years. In those days they didn’t know how to give blood transfusions, so the poor soul must have been in a near-critical condition after losing blood over that long a time. In her weakened state, it must have taken a monumental effort on her part to get to Jesus. I can well imagine that she practically dragged herself there.
But not only was she in terrible shape physically, she apparently was in great emotional distress as well, due to the toll her disease had taken on her, of course, but also for another reason: because of the nature of her illness, the Jews, on the basis of Leviticus 15:25,would have considered her ceremonially unclean. So, for all practical purposes she was an outcast in the eyes of man.
However, we see from what happened here that Jesus welcomes everyone, regardless of their social standing. There are no “second class citizens” with Jesus. All are precious in his sight.
Furthermore, the woman was now financially destitute. She had spent all she had on doctors, trying to find a cure for her disease, but none of them had helped her. In fact, they had actually harmed her. I assume that none of them did so intentionally, but nevertheless their crude treatments had only caused her condition to deteriorate.
So, here was a woman who was hurting deeply, from physical pain, from humiliation, and from discouragement.
Perhaps you can identify with her, if not in the particulars of her dilemma, at least in principle. The fact is that all of us have times when we hurt. Some hurts last on and on, this woman had been suffering for twelve years. You might be in the throes of some agonizing crisis right now. Your problem may be known to others, or you may be dealing with some very intense private pain. You might be struggling with a serious physical illness. Maybe you are lonely, feeling rejected and unloved. You might be depressed because of some personal moral failure. Perhaps someone you trusted has betrayed you, or it could be that someone you care about very much has met with tragedy. You might be suffering from a loss of self-respect. You might feel that your plight is hopeless, and that there’s no use keeping on.
But I assure you that as long as there is life, there is hope. You can find help in the Lord. This woman did. She was desperate, and running out of time, but when she turned to Christ, things changed dramatically.
II. The Woman's Healing
In verses 27-29 we read: “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.”
Notice that “she had heard of Jesus.” Romans 10:17 says, “So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.” We don’t know who told her about Jesus, but she took the information seriously, acted on it, and experienced a miracle in her life. You never know what impact you might be making when you speak to someone about the Savior. So, you and I need to take advantage of those opportunities to point others to him, we’ll never know how much good we’ve done until we get to heaven.
Of course, people need to read the Bible for themselves, too, and people also need to be in Sunday School and church on Sunday, for that’s still another opportunity to hear about Jesus. If you don’t read the Bible at home, and if you don’t regularly come to church, it’s no wonder that you’re floundering and failing, and have no real sense of purpose in life. The more you expose yourself to hearing the Word of God, the more likely it is that life-changing faith will be ignited within your heart.
So, the first thing that started this woman on the road to finding a remedy for her misery was that she “heard of Jesus,” and what she heard convinced her that he could help her.
Verse 27 says that she “came in the press behind.” It has been suggested that she might have feared the consequences of a ceremonially unclean woman approaching a religious leader, or she might have been afraid she would be rebuked for delaying Jesus on his important mission. It may also be that she was simply timid by nature. According to Luke’s account of this incident, she still tried to hide even after Jesus had healed her.
Here is an example of how powerful genuine faith can be, even when that faith is accompanied by peculiar ideas. There was an ancient belief that a person’s power extended into his clothing, and apparently this woman held to that idea. But in spite of that superstitious notion, her faith in Jesus and his power was genuine, and Jesus honored her faith and healed her.
The Bible makes it clear that it is not always God’s will to heal illness. Sometimes, for reasons that are beyond us, God allows illness to continue, sometimes even to the point of death. But whenever he does not choose to heal, he does offer us special spiritual strength to sustain us and give us victory in spite of the situation.
And how do we receive that special strength? We have to meet two conditions. For one thing, we have to ask him for that special strength. Secondly, and this is the really hard part, we have to come to the point of surrendering our will to his, in spite of our heartbreak and confusion. We have to finally bring ourselves to the place that we say, “Lord, I don’t understand it, but I realize that you are God, and I accept the fact that you’re the Sovereign of health and sickness, of life and death, that you don’t make mistakes, that all of your dealings with us are in love even when we can’t make any sense of what’s happening to us, and that one day you’re going to make it all come out like it’s supposed to. So, in the meantime, Lord, help me to have the faith that Job had, when he cried out, in Job 13:15, ‘Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him....’”
Corrie Ten Boom, a survivor of the Holocaust, said: “When a train goes through a tunnel and it gets dark, you don’t throw away the ticket and jump off. You sit still and trust the engineer.”
But in the case of this woman, it was God’s will to heal, and Jesus did so in response to her faith, even though it was a timid faith. The lesson there for you and me is that even if our faith is weak, we need to go ahead and use it,because even small faith can be a powerful tool. In fact, Jesus said, in Matthew 17:20, “...If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence to yonder place; and it shall remove; and nothing shall be impossible unto you.” That promise assumes, of course, that the particular mountain in question is one that God wills to have moved. But if that is the case, then even a little bit of genuine faith can result in great things.
In fact, we’re going to see later in this passage that this woman’s faith resulted not only in physical healing, but also in something far greater, spiritual healing.
III. The Woman's Confession
We read in verse 30: “And Jesus, immediately knowing in himself that virtue [the Greek word is dunamis, which literally means “power,” it’s the word from which we get our English word, “dynamite”] had gone out of him, turned him about in the press, and said, Who touched my clothes?”
Some have suggested that because Jesus had temporarily laid aside certain of his divine prerogatives, he actually did not know for the moment just who it was that he had healed. Others have suggested, however, that he definitely did know, and was asking the question in order to lead the woman to testify as to what had happened to her.
Verse 31: “And his disciples said unto him, Thou seest the multitude thronging thee, and sayest thou, Who touched me?” They didn’t understand it, but in spite of all the jostling and shoving, Jesus sensed that someone in that crowd needed healing and that it was the Father’s will for healing to take place. Jesus further sensed that that person was reaching out to him from a believing heart, and he responded to that touch of faith.
Now, verses 32-33: “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.”
The woman apparently had thought to get her blessing and sneak away undetected. That is even clearer from Luke 8:47: “And when the woman saw that she was not hid, she came trembling, and falling down before him, she declared unto him before all the people for what cause she had touched him, and how she was healed immediately.”
But Jesus taught her that she needed to testify before others as to what God had done in her life. Thus, this woman, who was timid by nature, was emboldened by our Lord to tell that whole crowd what Jesus had done for her.
Our Lord can, and will, do the same for you and me. At times you and I might be hesitant to share our faith, especially in certain settings. But if we’ll ask him to, Jesus will give us courage to speak out. It’s his will that we do so. Psalm 107:2 says, “Let the redeemed of the Lord say so....”
IV. The Woman's Assurance
Look at verse 34: “And he said unto her, Daughter, thy faith hath made thee whole; go in peace, and be whole of thy plague.”
This is the only time in the New Testament that Jesus called anyone by that particular Greek term for “daughter.” As I mentioned earlier, not only did Jesus stop her hemorrhaging but, in addition to that, something far greater than physical healing also occurred. This woman no doubt had heard that Jesus came to save lost sinners, and she not only had faith for him to heal her physically, but she also had faith for him to heal her spiritually, in other words, to save her. By calling her “daughter” Jesus was saying, “You are now a child of God. You are now a member of God’s spiritual family.”
When Jesus said to her, “thy faith hath made thee whole,” he used a Greek word, sesoken, a form of sozo, which can be, and often is, translated “saved.” For instance, Titus 3:5 says that “according to his mercy he saved us,” and the word for saved in that verse is a variant of the same Greek word that Jesus used here. So, literally Jesus said to the woman, “thy faith hath saved thee,” and he speaks that same word of assurance to everyone who believes in him unto salvation. For example, in John 6:47 he gave this promise: “Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me hath everlasting life.”
To be healed spiritually, in other words, to be saved, is every person’s greatest need. The Bible teaches that all of us have sinned, and that sin results in inner defeat in this life and eternal hell in the life to come, but that Jesus came to set us free from sin’s condemnation. Romans 6:23 says, “For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.” In 1 Corinthians 15:3-4 we read that “Christ died for our sins...was buried...and that he rose again the third day....” Acts 16:31 says, “...Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved....”
The faith that saves is a faith that is accompanied by repentance, and involves a total surrender of your life to the crucified, risen, living, coming again Son of God. If you’ve never made that commitment to Jesus, I urge you to do so, it will be the greatest decision you could ever make.
Jesus made it clear to this woman that it was her faith that had made her whole, so apparently touching his garment was simply her crude way of expressing her faith. Nowhere does the Bible suggest that that is to be a norm, but it was her unusual way, and God honored her faith, which says to me that you and I should be careful not to judge folks who express their faith differently from the way we express ours.
Don’t misunderstand me. I’m not suggesting for one split second that right doctrine and right practice are not important, they are important, tremendously so. I’m simply saying that a person can have genuine faith that God honors and yet not express that faith in what you and I consider an orthodox manner, so we need to be charitable toward those who don’t do things just like we think they should. Obviously, there are Biblical bounds beyond which no one should ever go, but within reason there is room for people to express their faith in different ways.
The woman had come to Jesus not only with a severe physical illness, but also with inner turmoil, the Bible says, “fearing and trembling.” But once she had placed her faith in Jesus as her Savior, he said to her in verse 34, “go in peace.” That’s one of the wonderful miracles of being saved: God gives you peace.
The peace which he gives is not the absence of trouble or conflict; rather, it is a deep-seated sense of wholeness and well-being which is not dependent on the ebb and flow of outward circumstances. Even if you are not healed of your physical infirmities as this woman was, you can still have that inner peace. Jesus said, in John 16:33, “These things I have spoken unto you, that in me ye might have peace. In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.” If your life is anchored trustfully and obediently to Jesus as your Lord and Savior, you can have inner peace even when you are being battered by the storms of life.
In our back yard is a lawn decoration that one of our sons gave us. It has several components, and at the top is a little wooden cut-out in the shape of a bird house, but it is only two-dimensional. It’s only a flat board that looks like a bird house. There is what appears to be a hole into the bird house, but it is only a circle of black paint. But one day my wife, Connie, looked out the window and saw that a little bird was flying into that patch of black paint on that wooden cut-out, trying to enter what he thought was a bird house. That little bird’s confusion and frustration reminds me of what a lot of people are doing. They are trying to find entrance into the abundant life by various avenues that look real and appealing, but they are only illusions. There is only one way to find forgiveness of sins, newness of life, and inner wholeness, and that is through Jesus Christ. Jesus said, in John 10:9, “I am the door: by me if any man enter in, he shall be saved....” In the next verse he said, “...I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.”
Are you hurting tonight, and looking for relief? Maybe you feel like Carol Mayhall who wrote a book entitled, “Help, Lord, My Whole Life Hurts!” Whether you’ve ever faced up to it or not, your biggest problem, and everyone’s biggest problem, is sin. Turn to Jesus and let him save you. He not only will give you a home in heaven when you die, but right now, in this life, he will give you the grace, strength, and courage for whatever battles you have to fight.
His power can make you what you ought to be;
His blood can cleanse your heart and make you free;
His love can fill your soul, and you will see ‘Twas best for Him to have His way with thee.
