At some point, we all end up at the end of our rope. Sometimes it’s our own fault. Sometimes it’s not. At those times – we feel that we need to do something – it’s like the last roll of the dice …

Jesus Christ Superstar

It is just fantastic to be with you again today and today we are going through the last message in a four week series called, "Taking God at His Word". God makes a whole bunch of promises in His Word about who we are in Christ. Jesus, when you think about it, is the "feel good" factor, but every time I get up and I say, “We need to feel good about who we are in Christ,” someone will come up to me afterwards and say, “No, no, no, we shouldn’t talk that way. We’re sinners; we shouldn’t be full of ourselves. No, you shouldn’t talk that way.” And my answer is, “Come on! Jesus came to give us abundant life – life to the full. He said, “When I set you free, you’ll be free indeed.” And again, later, Paul, the Apostle, writes, “For freedom, we have been set free.”

The whole point of Jesus dying on the cross to pay for our weaknesses and our failures – yeah our sin – and Him rising again, the whole point of that – the death and resurrection – is that we should have a new life – a fresh start when we put our faith in Him. That doesn’t mean that there’s a magic wand and nothing bad will ever happen to us and that we won’t face adversity – no, it doesn’t mean that. But it means that we can face everything that the world throws at us; that life throws at us and feel good about who we are in Jesus Christ. Since the day that Jesus came into my life, into my heart I have been able to feel good about myself. Not because of who I am; not because of what I’ve done but because who Jesus is and what He’s done for me.

We need to ditch the self-image – and we all have a self-image of who we are - sometimes that is an arrogant, pompous self-image, as mine was and sometimes it is such a low self-image. You know, people who suffer with low self-esteem have a low self-image. We need to take that and say that’s the old man; that person is dead. I have a new image of who I am. I am made in the image of God and I am going to have a faith image. It is time, people, to take God at His Word.

The first three programs in this series – firstly three weeks ago, we started off with a program called, ‘Come as you are’ and we saw how God says that we have Jesus, the High Priest, who knows exactly what it’s like to walk in our shoes, because He has and because of that, because of Jesus, we can and should come boldly before the throne of grace. It’s like God’s having a barbecue; God’s having a party and it’s "come as you are". It’s not – let’s change ourselves before we come to God – no, come as you are and let Him change us. Big step - take God at His Word!

And then two weeks ago we looked at Ezekiel chapter 37, in a message called, "Can these bones live". We saw how God called Ezekiel to prophesy over Israel and to raise them up from being a valley full of dead bones, to being alive and full of God’s life and full of God’s breath and when we come to Him feeling dead; like a valley full of dry bones, that’s exactly what He wants to do for us. It’s time to take God at His Word! And last week we looked at overcoming adversity God’s way. We saw how Israel had strayed yet again from God and in the Book of Malachi, God pointed out their sin and their failure and He gave them a way back, specifically for them, something that they could cope with and so they took God at His Word.

Today we are going to look at another form of adversity. That adversity was a consequence of Israel’s own rebellion against God and that happens – we do that sometimes, but this week I’d like to look at the sort of adversity that happens that’s not our fault – when you get retrenched or someone you love dies or a relationship breaks down or sickness strikes us or we just feel this heaviness – the list can be as long as your arm. What happens to us on the inside is that we feel small and alone and insignificant and Jesus is Jesus, yes He’s Jesus, but He’s the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords. He’s high and He’s mighty and He created the whole universe. Does He have the time or the inclination or the will to help me when I’m in the middle of that? Yeah, I know, we know it in our heads, but in our hearts, right at those times?

It can be so difficult to realise that God wants to help us. So we are going to look at someone that Jesus helped; it was the woman who had been bleeding for twelve years. He helped her when she was a nobody and when He was everybody - He was Jesus Christ, Superstar. Let’s have a read; if you have a Bible, grab it and let’s go to Mark chapter 5, beginning at verse 21. This is how it goes.

When Jesus had crossed again in the boat to the other side, a great crowd gathered around Him and He was by the sea. Then one of the leaders of the synagogue, named Jairus, came and when Jairus saw Jesus, he fell at His feet and begged Him repeatedly, “My little daughter is at the point of death. Come, come and lay your hands on her so that she may be made well and live.” And so Jesus went with Jairus.

A large crowd followed them and pressed in on Jesus. Now there was a woman who had been suffering from hemorrhages for twelve years. She had endured much under many physicians and had spent all that she had and she was no better, but rather she grew worse. She heard about Jesus and came up behind Him in the crowd and touched His cloak, because she said to herself, “If I can just touch His clothes I’ll be made well.”

Immediately, her hemorrhaging stopped and she felt in her body that she was healed of her disease. Immediately aware that power had gone out of Him, Jesus turned around in the crowd and said, “Who touched my clothes?” His disciples said to Him, “You can see the whole crowd is pressing in on you, how can you say, “Who touched me?”

But Jesus looked all around to see who’d done it. The woman, knowing what had happened to her, came in fear and trembling and fell down before Jesus and told Him the whole truth, and He said to her, “Daughter, your faith has made you well, go in peace and be healed.” While He was still speaking, some people came from the leader’s house, from Jairus’s place to say “Your daughter is dead, don’t trouble the teacher any further,” but overhearing what they said, Jesus said to the leader of the synagogue, “Don’t fear, only believe.”

The crux of this story is that Jesus is walking along and the leader of a synagogue, Jairus, comes to Him because his daughter is dying and yet, what is going to Jairus’s house which is a pressing need - the guy’s daughter is dying – this woman stops Jesus on the way and He has time to spend with her. Look at the key players; there is a power play going on here in this story. The crowd, the disciples, Jairus, Jesus, the woman, Jairus’s friends and of course, Jairus’s daughter and we see that this huge crowd was following Jesus and Jesus had been doing miracle after miracle and so He was attracting a really huge crowd. I remember when I was a young boy and the Beatles came to town, and the crowds were all around. This, this is Jesus Christ Superstar, and yet He has time to stop for this woman.

Who’s Got the Power

We’re looking today on the program at this story of the bleeding woman; this woman who’d be struggling and she’d been to doctors and she’d lost all her money – had been struggling for twelve years and Jesus comes to town; Jesus Christ Superstar, followed by this huge crowd. Jairus, the synagogue leader, gets to Him first and a power play happens. Let’s just look at the woman and Jairus – just compare them. Here were two people that both came to Jesus with a need - Jairus, his daughter was dying. Well, that’s a big need; there was an urgency around that. And this woman - this woman had been struggling for twelve years in sickness.

Let’s just do a bit of a comparison. In this first century, patriarchal society; on the one hand Jairus was a man, she was a woman and women in those days were often treated just as a possession. See it was a patriarchal society. He was the leader of a synagogue – he was a religious leader – he was somebody in this town.

This woman, she had no position – he was respected, she was despised. He had an identity; we know his name – Jairus. Tell me, what was the woman’s name? We don’t read her name in the story; she had no identity, she was a nobody – we never get to find out what her name was. He was close to God; he was a leader in the synagogue, but she, she was an outcast. You say to me, “Berni, how do you know that she was an outcast; she was just a woman that was sick? No, no, no. She had been bleeding for twelve years and under to Mosaic Law, this woman was unclean and so she was an outcast.

Just flip your Bible, if you have one, back to Leviticus, right at the beginning, in the law; in the Torah. This is the Jewish, Hebrew Law that was laid down under God’s hand. The law under which Israel lived and in chapter 15 of Leviticus, verse 25, it says this:

If a woman has a discharge of blood for many days, not at the time of her impurity or if she has a discharge beyond the time of her impurity, all the days of her discharge she shall continue in uncleanness. As in the days of her impurity, she shall be unclean. Every bed, on which she lies during all the days of her discharge, shall be treated as the bed of her impurity and everything on which she sits, shall be unclean as in the uncleanness of her impurity. Who ever touches these things shall be unclean and shall wash his clothes and bathe in water as be unclean until the ...

Last Roll of the Dice // Taking God at His Word, Part 4