Humanity is suffering. On top of all the things from which we suffer, the most glaring in our world right now is the social, economic, political, public health, religious and racial injustice issues exposed by the COVID-19 global pandemic. Just this week our nation reached it’s anniversary of the first COVID-19 case to come to our shores. And now, one year later, we gasp at the tragic, and largely unnecessary, loss of life of over 400,000 human beings in America and counting. Just let the weight of that number grip your heart for a moment. Can you imagine how those grieving families and loved ones feel right now as some still debate the reality of this pandemic? Well, their loss is real and so is the suffering of those currently battling through this pestilence-like virus.
One has to wonder how the heart of God feels as He sees and responds to the suffering of people made in His image. Well, thankfully He has left us with the witness of His response to human suffering in the life of Jesus recorded in the Gospels of the Scriptures. In Jesus we see divinity veiled in a human body, which constantly encountered the suffering of humanity. In His public ministry as Messiah, He has left us with quite an impressive track record of healing multitudes of people suffering from sickness, decease and demonic possession. Jesus was and is the greatest threat to human suffering this world has ever experienced! And it’s with this hope still beating in his chest that a father interrupts Jesus’ conversation in mid sentence. This leader of the nearby synagogue, named Jairus, kneels down before Jesus in worship, with desperation in his eyes. From the time he left his house, his sick 12 year old daughter was already on the verge of death. So when you compare his urgent request of Jesus in Matthew 9:18 with the accounts in Mark and Luke, you get the sense that he believes she might already be dead. Yet rising out of his aching heart comes the request of faith that Jesus would come lay His hands on his daughter so that she would be made well or even raised from the dead. What may have inspired this astonishing faith in Jesus was Jairus may have heard the recent report of Jesus interrupting the funeral of the widow’s son in Nain and raising him from the dead. So Jairus believes if Jesus did it before, He can do it again! All he wants for his daughter is just one touch from Jesus!
Now what should immediately grab our attention is that Jesus doesn’t respond by healing Jairus’s daughter from a distance with just a word, like He’s done in other similar instances. Instead He immediately get’s up to go personally with Jairus to heal his daughter. And Jesus is not alone. His disciples also rise up to go with Him, for in each of these healing stories are Jesus’ followers watching closely behind Him and learning from Him what He wants to reproduce in them. Remember disciples of Jesus seek to model their lives after His by learning how to live and love like Him. So today we join them on their journey with Jesus in Matthew 9, with this penetrating question in our minds. What does Jesus’ personal response to human suffering reveal about Him and how we, as His followers, are supposed to respond? No doubt Jairus’s faith got a serious boost when he saw Jesus and His disciples immediately rise up and go with him to his house. But like many of us who are living between a prayer request and an answer to prayer, along the way his patient faith got severely tested by an unexpected interruption we find in verse 20…
“Just then a woman who had suffered for twelve years with constant bleeding came up behind him. She touched the fringe of his robe, for she thought, “If I can just touch his robe, I will be healed.” Jesus turned around, and when he saw her he said, “Daughter, be encouraged! Your faith has made you well.” And the woman was healed at that moment.”
Well, if you’re Jairus right now, you must be filled with mixed emotions at this woman’s miraculous healing. On the one hand you don’t want to rush Jesus and rain on the parade of celebrating this woman’s healing, but at the same time the clock is ticking and you asked Him for healing for your daughter first. There’s a large crowd pressing all around while your trying to keep things moving along and He has to delay answering your request to answer somebody else’s! Then it dawns on us, as we watch Jesus respond to both of these requests, that what Jairus and this woman had in common was a desperate faith in what Jesus could do for them. As He was on the way to healing Jairus’s 12 year old daughter who’s on the brink of death, He stops to heal this woman, calling her “Daughter”, who’s been sick for as many years as his daughter’s been alive. And while Jairus might be feeling like his faith is being tested by Jesus answering someone else’s request for healing while delaying the answer to his request for healing. Jesus is actually trying to strengthen his faith by sending him the message that if He can heal this woman, whom he called daughter, whose been sick for 12 years, then surely He can heal his 12 year old daughter too. You see, what we’re learning here is that Jesus heals human suffering in response to…
Desperate Faith in His Ability.
You see, sometimes we believe that God is able to do something for others, yet we just struggle with believing if He’ll do it for us too. Yet He’s actually designed for those very stories of what He’s doing in other people’s lives to be the very thing that strengthens our faith in what He’s about to do in our life, because He’s more than able to do it! We just need to leave the way and timing to His wisdom.
My step brother, Brandon, is a huge Batman fan. It’s like he’s got everything Batman. He’s got the Batman watch, belt buckle, t-shirt and if there was one available, he’d probably get his very own “bat signal.” You see, the idea behind the bat signal, with this DC Comic superhero, was if Gotham city was every in desperate need of help against a vicious villain, rampant crime or some common threat, all the police captain had to do was turn on the bat signal and it’s beam would rise high above the city, inviting Batman to come to their rescue. The only reason the bat signal was used is because they believed in Batman’s ability to do something for them that they couldn’t do for themselves. And I just believe Jesus is drawn, like a magnet, to those who have desperate faith in His ability to do for them what they cannot do for themselves!
Jairus is growing impatient with each passing second, when suddenly he’s hit with the devastating news that his daughter is dead. He’s even told not to bother with trying to bring Jesus anymore. Yet Jesus hasn’t forgotten about Jairus and His ability to heal his daughter wasn’t hindered by death. Therefore Luke records in Luke 8:50, “But when Jesus heard what had happened, he said to Jairus, “Don’t be afraid. Just have faith, and she will be healed.” Jesus still doesn’t want Jairus to give up his desperate faith in His ability, which is why Jesus said to the woman, in Jairus’ hearing, that her faith had made her well. Jesus then goes directly to his house, removes everyone who’s unbelief could be a hinderance to the what He was about to do and then raised Jairus’s daughter from the dead by one simple touch.
My friend, what may seem like God is delaying your request, while blessing others, may actually be Him trying to strengthen your faith in His ability through their stories. Trust His heart. Notice Jesus got up to go to Jairus’s house immediately when the request came to Him. That was to show you how God moves when He hears your request. Trust His timing. He’s never delayed. It just looks like that to us. But He’s always on time.
CJ Cousins
Follower of Jesus, Husband, Father, Associate Pastor for Younger Generations at Vienna SDA Church and Speaker/Author for Living For Him.
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