MATTHEW 9:18-26
ON FRIDAY, OCTOBER 23, 2009 I received a phone call from Randy Gruendyke, a longtime friend and mentor. Randy asked me if I could come to Taylor on Monday to give a talk. The reason for this last-minute invitation was because Kent Hughes, who was scheduled to speak, just moments before he boarded a plane from Spokane learned that his granddaughter, Caroline, had been tragically struck by a car. He naturally rushed from the airport to the hospital to see her before she died. She was nineteen years old.
On Sunday afternoon as I was making the four-hour drive from Naperville, Illinois to Taylor University I came to the two-lane country road from Lafayette to Upland, Indiana, where I turned off the radio, rolled down the widows, and began to enjoy the fresh air and quiet countryside. But thoughts of death quickly began to disquiet my mind.
I first thought about my own death. Caroline’s accident seemed so not “accidental”—a man had a heart attack and died while driving, obviously lost control of his car, and ran right into her as she was waiting at a bus stop with music playing in her earphones. She literally didn’t know what hit her. How easy it would be for me, I thought as I was driving on that country road, to take a curve too fast, to misjudge when passing a slow truck, to get hit by an oncoming car. How easy it would be to be just another name painted on a board on the side of the road. With my eyes firmly fixed on the pavement in front of me and my mind alert as ever, I still recognized afresh how little I was in control and how quickly my life could end—a flat tire, bad brakes, a worn-out bridge, a drunk driver, a foolish driver, a dead driver killed by a heart attack two seconds before our paths would cross.
I thought about my own death. I also thought about my children and especially the death of my daughters. How emotionally difficult it would be for me to lose Lily, Evelyn, or Charlotte, one of my beautiful little girls.
One More Guest at Table
The Apostle Matthew begins this next section with a father who has just lost his daughter, his little twelve-year-old daughter, as Mark tells us (Mark 5:23, 41,42), his “only daughter,” Luke adds (Luke 8:42).
Can you feel the emotional weight of verse 18?
While he [Jesus] was saying these things to them, behold, a ruler [a man named Jairus, who was “one of the rulers of the synagogue,” Mark 5:22; Luke 8:41], came in and knelt before him, saying, “My daughter has just died, but come and lay your hand on her, and she will live.”
When some Biblical scholars and commentators, even the ones I most respect, look at Jairus and his plea for help from Jesus, they see a desperate faith. For example, one commentator writes,
We must not mistakenly think Jairus had become a [follower] of Jesus or that he was a man of great faith. The simple fact was he was desperate. He had heard of Jesus’ miracles (maybe had even seen some) and possibly had talked to some who had been healed. He was not sure about Jesus, but Jesus was his only chance.
Another commentator adds, “If you compare the ruler of the synagogue with the centurion you will say that the full brightness of faith shone in the centurion, while scarcely the smallest portion of it was visible in the ruler.”
I agree that if we compare the faith of the centurion with the faith of Jairus, the latter would fall short. In 8:10 Jesus unreservedly says of the centurion, “Truly, I tell you, with no one in Israel have I found such faith.” But to say that the light of Jairus’s faith was less luminous because he asked Jesus to come and lay his hands on his daughter instead of merely asking our Lord to speak the word is a bit much. Moreover, to say that his faith was completely erroneous—that it was only his utter desperation that brought him to Christ—is to miss the whole point. What is wrong with saying that this man had a desperate faith or that the woman we will encounter in verses 20-22 had the same or that we, when we came to Christ, came in some sense or in every sense in utter desperation and complete dependence? I came to Christ only after I had lost everything, including my pride.
In Matthew 19 Jesus finds himself bombarded with little children. His disciples don't like this and want to put a stop to this spectacle. But Jesus sternly rebukes them, saying, “Let the little children come to me and do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of heaven” (v. 14). What I find most interesting is that Jesus makes this comment right before another “ruler”—a rich young ruler—refuses to become childlike in faith. He refuses to come to Jesus in desperation and complete dependence. But here, along with the ruler of chapter 9, a very different picture emerges. It is a beautiful picture of dependent faith. Here an old synagogue ruler becomes like a little child.
This childlike faith is apparent in many ways. First, his faith is demonstrated in that he came to Jesus, and as far as we know, to Jesus alone. He didn't run to the doctors in town or to the religious leaders who were in Matthew's house, though the scribes, the Pharisees, and the disciples of John the Baptist were all there. He came to Jesus. Second, his faith is demonstrated in his posture. He came to Jesus like the magi and the leper (and the seraphim and cherubim in Revelation 5:8, 14). That is, he “knelt" before Jesus (v. 18). He “fell at his feet” is how Mark phrases it (Mark 5:22).
Picture the scene. I like to imagine the reaction of the religious crowd who are gathered outside Matthew’s front door, throwing their questions at Jesus and murmuring their accusations against him. And then here comes Jairus. They know Jairus. He’s one of the rulers of the local synagogue. They think, ‘Ah, he must have a question for Jesus too. Just line up behind us.” But no, there is no question, only a bended knee and a confession, a statement full of faith in Jesus. The sense of his plea is this:
My daughter has died. But I have faith in you. I may not know who you are—a prophet, the Messiah. What I do know is that God is with you in a unique way, an extraordinary way, that he is with you as he was with Elijah (1 Kings 17:17-24) and Elisha (2 Kings 4:32-37) And just as they raised the dead, I believe you, Jesus, if you would just come to my house and simply lay your hand on her (not stretch your body over the child like Elijah did, and not even hand-to-hand or mouth-to-mouth or eyes-to-eyes as Elisha did), I believe that she will be brought back to life.
Can you imagine this scene? What did the scribes and Pharisees think of this—this posture, this request? Has the whole world gone mad? What is our Jairus doing? How can it be that our colleague, one of the pillars of the Jewish community, is groveling at the feet of some unordained popular preacher, some demon-empowered miracle-worker from the lowly town of Nazareth?
This ruler’s faith was not perfect (whose faith is?), but it was pleasing to God. I say that because Jesus accepted his offer. When we read verse 19, “And Jesus rose and followed him, with his disciples,” we see our Lord’s positive reply to Jairus’s humble and faithful plea for help.
Jesus is not afraid to tell people that their faith is misplaced or lacking But here he doesn’t. Here there is no rebuke, no correction, no “O ye of little faith.” Here Jesus arises to raise this girl from the dead. Here Jesus gets up from the table with sinners to show that just as he has the authority to forgive sins, so he has the authority to conquer the curse. He has the power to raise the dead, to breathe life into dead bones and bodies.
The First Touch
So Jesus journeys to Jairus’s home. But on the way he is interrupted by the silent plea of another desperate soul, a woman whose prospects were little better than the little girl our Lord was going to save. Verses 20-22 describe this woman, her reason for coming to Jesus, and her faith in him.
And behold, a woman who had suffered from a discharge of blood for twelve years came up behind him and touched the fringe of his garment, for she said to herself, “If I only touch his garment, I will be made well.” Jesus turned, and seeing her he said, “Take heart, daughter [that’s an interesting word]; your faith has made you well.” And instantly the woman was made well.
Certainly this ruler’s situation was desperate, but so too was this woman’s situation, perhaps even more so. If Jairus loses his daughter, it would indeed be a personal tragedy, but he still has a job, house, money, servants, and a wife. But this woman has nothing. Due to her persistent discharge of blood she has been “discharged" of her health and of her wealth, and likely this poor woman has also been discharged from any marital relationship she may have enjoyed. Furthermore, she was discharged from normal interaction within her culture, especially from the Jewish religion. According to Leviticus 15:19-33, a woman was “unclean” for seven days after her monthly period. Therefore, this woman has been “unclean” not for seven days but for twelve years. Due to her bleeding she had been unable to participate in any of the public rituals of worship for over a decade.
However, you have to understand that this woman, as bad off as she was, was not like some of the homeless who walk our city streets because they have consciously walked down the path of destruction. She wasn’t a drug addict. She wasn’t a runaway. And she hadn’t given up on life. She was restless in her pursuit of help. According to Mark, she had “spent all that she had” on physicians, and yet to no avail (Mark 5:26). Despite getting treatments, she nevertheless “grew worse” (Mark 5:26).
But one clay she spots Jesus, the Great Physician. “She had heard the reports about Jesus” (Mark 5:27). At this point in Capernaum, who hadn’t? So she came up with a plan. "I will sneak up behind him, hide myself in the croud, and touch his tassel.” Every Jewish man in Jesus’ day had four tassels sewn upon the four corners of his cloak, the fringe of the “garment.” These tassels were visible reminders to obey God’s covenant commands (Numbers 15:37-41; Deuteronomy 22:12). Touch one tassel. Just one! That was her plan.
Now again we look at this and say, “Hmm, what’s up with this?” At first it makes sense why some would argue that this woman’s “faith” is merely or mostly superstitious. Just touch the tassel? Some scholars don’t give her the benefit of the doubt. Some suggest that her faith resembles the type of person who would touch the television screen when the televangelist promises a healing by doing so.
But this is not the impression we get from the Gospel writers. Matthew, Mark, and Luke (and Matthew especially) tell us that she hears about Jesus and responds to him. This is one of the genuine and basic characteristics of discipleship. Like the synagogue ruler’s faith, her faith in Christ comes prior to her healing. That’s significant. The timing is important.
I have an old friend, who is now serving as a missionary in the Middle East, who came to faith in Jesus Christ because when a teenager she was healed of a deadly disease. After the doctors had told her there was no hope for recovery, she was healed when a group prayed. Before this happened, she had been very rebellious. She had no faith in God or Jesus. She wanted nothing to do with Christianity. Yet through that gracious miracle God softened her hard heart to the gospel.
That seems natural enough. You are dying. God heals you. In gratitude you respond in faith and serve him the rest of your life. That’s wonderful! However, that’s not the picture of faith here. We can rightly say that this woman has greater faith than my friend because this woman’s faith is not a response to a miracle but a faithful expectation of one. Her faith may be imperfect (yes, mixed with “sin and error”), but it is bold and brave and strong enough to pick up a mountain and throw it into the sea. As we discover in verse 22, such faith is pleasing to God. We know it is pleasing to God because Jesus healed her. The flow of blood dried up. Immediately she was made well. Moreover, Jesus explicitly commended her, not saying, “I have made you well,” but “Your faith has made you well” (v. 22). Only one comment is made regarding the nature of her faith, and it is positive, not negative. Jerome put it this way: “Her touch on the hem of his garment was the cry of a believing heart.” Her faith is childish, perhaps, but also childlike.
From this, I want you to know that you don’t need to have all your then logical ducks in a row to come to Jesus. Nor do you have to have all your commandment-keeping ducks in a row to come to Jesus. You just need in come to him. You need to push through the crowd and come to him, the more empty-handed the better.
The Second Touch
I think this miracle—this interruption in the drama that keeps the first-time reader in suspense concerning the dead girl—would only strengthen Jairus's confidence in Christ. I think as he is walking home stride by stride with our Lord, his faith builds with each step. However, when he finally arrives home, we come to another interruption in the drama, an expected but disheartening one. At the very least it’s a stark reminder to him of reality. His daughter is still dead. This woman’s flow of blood might have stopped finally—and for her that was life again, but his daughter’s flow of blood had also stopped finally. It stopped because her heart stopped. So when he arrived home the only life there is the noise of sad-sounding flutes and the sadder-sounding cries of the crowd (v. 23).
Many years ago when I was a teenager I attended the wake of a close friend of mine, a boy who was two years younger than I. Like Caroline, he was struck by a car. This happened at an intersection that was less than two blocks away from my childhood home. I will never forget standing in line with hundreds of other people steadily walking toward his casket to pay respects and offer a prayer and seeing and hearing his mother in the front row weeping and wailing. Her youngest son lay lifeless before her, and she had no compulsion other than to cry out at the top of her lungs, calling out her son’s name.
It may be that is precisely the type of scene Jairus and Jesus came upon— a mother, family members, and neighbors sincerely weeping and wailing. But it is more likely that those causing such a “commotion” were professional mourners, as strange as that may sound to us. In ancient Israel, as even today in some non-Christian cultures, professional mourners were hired at the time of death. In the Mishnah it is said that for burial “even the poorest in Israel should hire not less than two flutes and one wailing woman.” Since this ruler was likely a rich man, the combination of the mournful music, the wailing of the many women, the hand-clapping, the beating of the breast, the tearing of hair, and the rending of garments ripped to the heart must have created quite a “commotion,” awakening everybody in town but the one body that mattered most. This reality of professional grievers makes better sense of Jesus’ directness and their response to his directness. “He said, ‘Go away, for the girl is not dead but sleeping.’ And they laughed at him” (v. 24).
Of course, Jesus is not here denying her death. He is not a brilliant medical specialist arriving at the house with a correct second opinion: “Oh, no, she is only in a coma. You fools, if I hadn’t arrived as soon as I did, this poor girl would have been buried alive.” Jesus is not denying her death; he is redefining it. Her death is not the end. It is not the grim reality it seems. It is nothing worse than deep sleep. In due course she will be getting up again. In due course Jesus will be dying and getting up again, and because of this you and I will likewise be dying and getting up again. She was only sleeping.
They wouldn't hear a word of it—“they laughed at him” (v. 24). They laughed him to scorn. Their tears were quickly changed to laughter, which is a clear indication of the superficiality of their grief. From a human perspective their laughter makes sense, for, of course, this poor girl is really dead! But they don’t know with whom they are dealing—the Son of the living God who can calm a deadly storm with one word of rebuke, cure madness with one command, and surely tell a “sleeping” body to wake up!
And so, as verse 25 records—here’s the miracle!—with complete authority over the situation, after “the crowd had been put outside,” our Lord “went in and took her by the hand, and the girl arose.” The weeping, wailing, and great commotion pulsing all around her could not renew the pulse of this deceased child. Yet the powerful touch of Christ literally woke the dead, a touch that spread to others as “the report of this went through all that district” (v. 26). It spread from Capernaum to Jerusalem to Damascus to Rome to London to New York to Chicago to wherever you are now, and it’s still traveling, giving hope to all who trust in Christ and his resurrection power.
Hammer Away
Martin Luther lost his beloved fourteen-year-old daughter, Magdalena, to the Great Plague that swept through Europe in the sixteenth century. Those who knew Luther later recalled the event:
Brokenhearted Luther knelt beside her bed and begged God to release her from the pain. Then when she had finally died, and the carpenters were nailing down the lid of the coffin, Luther screamed out, “Hammer away! Hammer away... for on the last day she shall rise again.”
That is our hope for Kent’s granddaughter, Caroline. That is our hope for all who die in Christ. Our ultimate hope is not to escape death. Who escapes death? This twelve-year-old girl would one day die again, just as Lazarus who was also raised from the dead, also eventually died again. This miracle story is not about how we should trust that Jesus will save us from an early death or from death itself. Jesus is not some mystical, magical, mythical Fountain of Youth. No. He is our resurrected Savior!
This story before us is really just a miniature version of the great story of our salvation: in the death of Christ is the death of death. He takes on the curse of death that Adam brought into the world. Specifically, in the death of Christ is the death of our spiritual death (we will be forgiven our sin), and in the resurrection of Christ is the death of our physical death (we will rise again bodily). Since Christ died and rose again, we who are united to him, though we may die, will also rise again to a better life.
That is our hope. It is a hope based on the reality of the resurrection and a hope that I hope brings encouragement to you today. Hammer away! Hammer away... for on the last day we shall rise again.
(R. Kent Hughes. and Douglas Sean O'Donnell., 2013; edited Carl Hinton., 2020)