seven rivers, Presbyterian Church, and Lakanto, Florida, sermons by Reverend Ray Cortese. 8th chapter of the Gospel of Luke, starting at the 40th verse, Jesus has been in the Sea of Galilee. They crossed in the boat, you recall, to the other side, to the region of the Garacines, the Gentile region, and with all they encountered on the way across, and on the other side, now they have returned, and Jesus finds there's a crowd waiting for him upon his return. We started verse 40 of Luke chapter 8, and as Jesus returned, the multitude welcomed him, they'd all been waiting for him. And there came a man named Jairus, and he was an official of the synagogue, and he fell at Jesus' feet, and began to entreat Jesus to come to his house for yet an only daughter, 12 years old, and she was dying. And as Jesus went, the multitudes were pressing against him, and a woman who had a hammerage for 12 years, and could not be healed by anyone, came up behind Jesus and touched the fringe of his cloak, and immediately her hammerage stopped. And Jesus said, who's the one who touched me? And while they were all denying it, Peter said, master, the multitudes are crowding and pressing upon you. And Jesus said, someone, touch me, for I am aware that power has gone out of me. And when the woman saw that she had not escaped notice, she came trembling and fell down before him, and declared in the presence of all the people the reason why she had touched him, and how she had been immediately healed. And Jesus said to her, daughter, your faith has made you well. Go in peace. And while Jesus was still speaking, someone came from the house of the synagogue official saying, your daughter has died. Don't trouble the teacher anymore. When Jesus heard this, he said, don't be afraid, only believe. And she shall be made well. And when Jesus came to the house, he didn't allow anyone to enter with him except Peter and John and James, and the girl's mother and father. Now, they were all weeping and lamenting for her. And he said, stop weeping. She has not died. She is asleep. And they laughed at him. They knew that she had died. He, however, took her by the hand and called saying, child, arise. And her spirit returned and she rose immediately, and he gave orders for something to be given her to eat. What? Jesus says, feed this little girl. She's hungry. I mean, why is that in there? This is such a grand and dramatic passage. I have something as pedestrian as the little girl's hungry. Get her some food. Why do you think that's in there? Well, listen, if you're writing a myth, if you're creating a legend, a story, you wouldn't put a detail like that in there. So why is that in there? That's in there because it what? Because it happened. It happened. And they're just simply recording what happened. And her parents were amazed, but Jesus instructed them to tell no one what had taken place. This then is the reading of God's holy and infallible word. The grass withers and the flower fades. But not the word of God. Know the word of God stands forever. You may be seated, please. Now, beating around the bush this morning, we're going to go right to it. Are you connected with God? That's really the prime question. Are you connected with God? People come to the class we call the pastor's class in this church. It's an inquirer's class for people who are considering the church. And I like to tell them the first class that you might come with questions. You're asking, am I going to like this church? Am I going to like their teachings? Am I going to like their ministry? Am I going to like this preacher? I like to remind them that they may answer no to all those things. They may not like seven reverse church. They may not like you. They may not like me. And they may never come again, but they can't escape this question. Because the real question isn't, do you like the church? The real question is, are you personally connected to God? Are you connected to God? In Luke chapter 8, a crowd gathers around Jesus. They're pressing on Him. There's a throng. They all want a piece of Him. They're reaching out. They're touching Him. They may be kissing Him. They may be grabbing Him. It's physical. They're all around Him. When suddenly Jesus says, what? Someone touched me. To which the disciples all look at each other, you know, with a quizzical look, it's like saying in a rugby scrum, someone touched me as if that would be news. They all look at each other, and Peter is the one, of course, who says, Lord, who didn't touch you? And Jesus said, no, no, no, no, no. Lots of people touch me, but somebody made a connection. In all the crowd. You see, it's not unusual to be proximate to Jesus. It's not unusual to be in the presence of Jesus to be near to Jesus. The question is, have you connected with Him? See, people, it's not unusual to go to church. Perhaps Christian school, perhaps you came from a church going Christian family. The Bible's familiar to you, to be around a knowledge of Jesus, to be hearing about Jesus, to know something about Jesus, but all that can be true, and you're still not what. You're not connected. You're not connected. Sometimes people grow up at a Christian home or a church, and then they move away, and they say, you know, I used to feel close to God, but now I've lost God. They may have never been connected. You see, they were experiencing the experience of other people. Enjoying God, experiencing God, being connected to God. They were getting warmed by somebody else's fire, right? As long as they were around those other people, they were getting it vicariously, but removed from their family or removed from the church. They're not connected personally. So are you connected? Are you connected with God? Remember a woman came up to me after a service, and she said, I know God has been with me my whole life. She said, I could tell you the tales of the way he has protected me, and guided me, and looked out for me. God has been with me my whole life. He's been for me my whole life, but I've never, I was sitting there in church today and I realized I've never been connected to him. He's been around. I've never been married to him. I've never been joined to him. Well, how about you? Thank you for coming out line. We'll try to answer the question this morning from the Word of God. How does one get connected to God? And the first point you'll notice this is that connecting with God is almost always proceeded by desperation. Desperation becomes the context, the environment in which people are connected with God. You connect with God. Listen to the first point. Here it is. You connect with God when you come humbly and empty and desperate. Tragedy and hardship are the prelude to truly meeting with God. There's a big crowd there, but there's two people who get Jesus attention, specifically, and one of those two people have in common. What? Desperation. Jairus is a synagogue official. He's a prominent religious person in the community. And a prominent Jewish religious person in the community would have nothing to do with who. What would it do for Jairus' reputation to be seen with Jesus? It was a part of professional advancement to have disdain for Jesus. Jairus' type would have wanted nothing to do with Jesus. What could it lead a man like that to come and throw himself at Jesus' feet, prostrate before him? I mean, imagine his reputation. Imagine the potential discipline from his spiritual elders. A man of his prominence would expect Jesus to come and kneel before him. Public. This isn't like Nicodemus. This isn't like a Jewish religious leader coming quietly at night where nobody could see in broad daylight. What would cause him to overcome his pride and his position and his status and make a fool of himself in front of a large crowd at the feet of Jesus? What? You know the answer. He's utterly desperate. His 12-year-old baby girl is about to die. They've tried the doctors. They've done what they've could. They've tried the medicines. He's desperate. Jesus sits off for his house. Now, the story turns truly unbelievable. Imagine if your child was desperately ill and about to die and they had a snake bite and they had poison coursing through their system. At any moment that poison was going to stop their heart and end their life and you found the antidote and the person who could administer it and you're racing across the county to get to your child with that antidote when suddenly the ambulance that you're in carines to a stop because there's a homeless person as a broken ankle. What would you be saying the whole time? Come on, come on, come on, come on, come on. Let's go. Jesus stops. And why does he stop as he's making his way through this crowd? Because somebody touches him. Here's amazing. We could read this passage and we could never see what's utterly revolutionary about Jesus. Is that he is answering the call of a prominent male Jewish religious official and he stops for who? He stops for an absolute nobody. Who's a woman? Who's an unclean woman? Only Jesus. Listen, there's a lesson here. The woman that Jesus stops for has a reproductive health problem. She's been bleeding for 12 years. Now, not only does she have the agony and the physical problem, but her problem is only exacerbated by the implications of that. It means she's unclean. It means that her... She's not allowed to be touched. She's not allowed to be in public. It means that her husband and she could share no intimacy, which probably means that he's left her undoubtedly means that he's left her and she would have been divorced and that she would have no family and she would be all alone. That's the implications of this and that culture. But it's not only that. The gospel of Mark tells us that she's gone to every doctor. She's been to the Cleveland Clinic. She's been to the Mayo Clinic. She's used all her money and all her attempts at cures have only made things worse. She is what? She's utterly desperate. And once again, what do we see from Jesus? If it's a man or a woman who gets his attention. If it's a man or a woman who has no value in that culture, the woman gets his attention. If it's the rich or the poor, it's the poor who get his attention. If it's the immoral, it's the immoral who gets his attention. If it's the religious or the orreligious, it's the orreligious who get his attention. It's a kiss who gets his attention, a tax collector. It's a Roman soldier. It's a woman at the well who had five husbands. It's a prostitute who gets his attention. And now it's a bleeding impure, ceremonially impure woman who gets the attention of Jesus over a prominent synagogue official. Anybody with reading this would see that Jesus is a social revolutionary like no other. Completely unwilling to conform to the morays of his day. But the lesson for us this morning ought to be what? It's the needy. It's the desperate who get connected with God. So, who gets connected with God? You get this point? You want to be connected with God? You're connected with God. You're connected with God. Those connected with God are desperate enough to come to Him. Now, here's the problem. Every one of us are bleeding. Every one of us are bleeding internally. Every one of us have wounded souls. And how did that come to pass? That's true. Every single one of us. We're bleeding because we are separated from who? We're separated from God. We're separated from our Creator. We're separated from our Father. We're separated from our Maker. We were made to have His intimacy, to be in connection and in relationship with Him. There is a God-shaped vacuum at the center of every human soul. And absent God, we are instead of being calm like little children who live in a house with their parents care. Instead of being well-fed, well cared for, relaxed, we are insecure, we are anxious, we are self-loathing, we are lonely, we are cut off. And you may think that none of those issues relate to you. When you're busy, when you're going for it hard during the day, but late at night, when you're all alone, then you know. So what do we do? What do we do with this emptiness? What do we do with these issues? Every one of us turns to doctors. The doctors of the soul, doctor's success, doctor workaholic, doctor materialism, doctor outward appearance, doctor popularity, doctor relationship, doctor marriage, doctor family, doctor alcohol. We turn to the doctors of this world to try to soothe our insecurity, our sense that we are worthless, our sense that we are nothing because we are cut off from God, we turn to all these doctors to satisfy us. Do you understand that you will never be connected to God until you are done with what? Until you're done with all your doctors, until you realize that none of these doctors can make you well. Now listen to me real close because here's a great danger for us. The great danger is people say, it's true. I've come to the place of my life where I realize these doctors are not satisfying the emptiness in my soul. I'm bleeding inside and these doctors aren't working so I'm going to start going to church and I'm going to get Jesus to make my life work. Here's a danger. Many people who go to church go to church so that Jesus will help their marriage because it's a good marriage that will ultimately stave off the bleeding in their soul. I'm going to get Jesus to help me in my business. I'm going to get Jesus to do this. I'm going to get Jesus to help me in my relationship with my kids to get my kids to straighten out. Jesus is not the means to make your life work. You know that person who could say, Jesus give me the love of my life and my soul will calm down to be loved by somebody as the deep longing of my heart. And what does Jesus say? I have no intention of doing that because I am the love of your life. I didn't come into this world to make your doctors work for you. And in fact his love for us is so aggressive and so unyielding that he will actually allow the doctors of our life and the wounds, the doctors of our life to fail and the wounds of our life to be unaddressed. Understand one of the great challenges of being a pastor is that people come to you virtually every day and they let you into the places in their life where they have such deep pain. I tell you this is what's happening in my marriage and this is what's happening to my grown children. Pastor this is what's happening with with my little children pastor the doctor gave us this report the other day. They're telling you that they're experiencing in great ways the brokenness of the world and your heart breaks for them what they're going through. But as your heart breaks for them at the same time there is what inside the pastor. What is the prelude to faith? What is the prelude connecting with God? It's desperation. So as people's lives collapse inside of you there's a spark of gospel optimism that says what? Now's the time. It was her broken body that brought her to the feet of Jesus. It was a child sick unto death that brought him to the feet of Jesus and so when people come and they bring their brokenness you say what? They are going to get the opportunity to have sweet fellowship to get connected with God in a way they've never experienced before. Thank you God. I'm the Lord loves he what? He chases. He strips away our idols. He strips away all our attempts to do life without him or our attempts to make him just a means to get our life to work. Oh to connect with God you got to be done with doctors and you have to be desperate just as I am poor wretched blind sight reaches healing of the mind. Yay all I need in thee I find a lamb of God I come. What do you need to connect with God all you need to connect with God is need all you need to connect with God is nothing. Who wants to be brought to the place of nothing? How much of a challenge you think it is to bring North Americans to the place of nothing? Nobody wants this painful surgery but it is the mercy of God that he allows it because he would give us himself and if you're not connected to him then you have not life. Second the prayer led to connecting with God is desperation but connecting with God does require faith. The passage says that Jesus says to this woman your faith has made you well. Jesus says to gyrus don't be afraid have what faith can access to God. Now here's a problem faith is such an overused word that if you were to say something to somebody you need to have faith what they hear you say may be entirely different than what you're intending to communicate. So you have to be very careful with instructions don't you. It's like the two guys that were hunting together and one of them suddenly becomes sick or ill. He actually falls on the ground he apparently stops breathing his friend gets over him and looks at him his eyes are rolling up in his head and the friend panics. You know what do I do he finds his cell phone he calls 911 and he says to the 911 operator my friend is dead my friend is dead. 911 operators train a calm cool collected to sir relax settle down I can help you now first of all make sure your friend is dead. There's a moment of silence and then a gunshot oh you guys are so quick picks up the phone and says okay now what you know you have to be careful with instructions. If you say to somebody you need to have faith well what they're thinking they need to do may be completely different than how the Bible describes faith for instance. Faith is informed faith is entirely consistent with your mind and with reason in our culture we have the idea that faith means you deny science and reason and clear thought and that what you do is you act actually against reason and against rationality some people even say that to get connected with God you have to take a what a. A leap an irrational leap of faith deny everything that you know to be true and act in a contrary to it well that's completely not what we mean at all this woman has the very beginnings of an informed faith mark chapter 5 verse 27 says that she went to Jesus because she had heard of him she'd heard of his great deed she didn't know very much this bleeding woman she didn't know the doctrine of the Trinity she couldn't have debated the marriage. She could have debated the merits of in prolapsarianism versus superlapsarianism she couldn't have explained the intricacies of the hypostatic union but she knew enough to run and throw herself at the feet of Jesus she knew it and she acted on it so faith is not contrary to reason at all. This Collins is the head of the human genome project and has written recently written a book called The Language of God that's getting a lot of play recently he was interviewed on CNN and this is what he said as a graduate student in physical chemistry in the 1970s I was an atheist finding no reason to postulate the existence of any truths outside of mathematics, physics or chemistry. Then I went to medical school and encountered life and death issues at the bedside of my patients challenged by one of those patients who asked well what do you believe doctor I began searching for answers I had to admit that the science I love so much was powerless to answer questions such as what's the meaning of life why am I here why does mathematics work anyway if the universe had a beginning who created it why are the physical constants in the universe so finally tuned to allow the possibility of complex life forms. Why do humans have a moral sense and what happens after we die I had always assumed that faith was based purely on purely emotional and irrational arguments and I was astounded to discover initially in the writings of CS Lewis and subsequently for many others that one could build a very strong case for the plausibility of the existence of God on purely rational grounds. A search to learn more about God's character led me to the person of Jesus Christ here was a person with remarkably strong historical evidence of his life whose claims about being God's son seemed to demand a decision about whether he was deluded or the real thing after resisting for nearly two years I found it impossible to go on living in such a state of uncertainty and I became a follower of Jesus here it is. Use your mind and you pursue the truth that's the way that you get connected with God you become informed about him you can't get connected to somebody that you do not know. You can take a book like Lee Stroubles book the case for faith or the case for Christ they're in the bookstore and I'd recommend them but I got one other book I think will even top those it's called the Bible take the gospel of John Matthew Mark Luke John open it up here's my challenge to you you want to be connected with God you start reading the gospel of John and read one chapter every day and you start with this prayer God. I don't even know if you exist but if you do will you reveal yourself to me in the words that are printed in this book I want to if you exist then I want to know you and if you honestly pray that prayer and you read that book one chapter a day by the time the months over it's very likely you'll be connected to God you'll be a follower of his as well. So when you say faith what do you mean you got to be clear first we mean an informed faith and the second thing we mean by faith is that people think today that that that that's what strong faith is about is is the energy with which we believe something the passion which which we commit ourselves to something we say of other people don't we wow they have they have really strong faith. Here's what you need to understand we say that you are saved by faith it's not your faith that saves you it's faith in Jesus it's Jesus who saves you it's the object of your faith that makes faith efficacious it's not the passion of your faith. It's having the right object a small faith in the right object is better than a great faith in the wrong object right a bear is chasing you and your friend through the woods you come to a cliff if you don't go over the cliff then the bear is going to kill you. So your friend looks down and sees a little twig extending out from the side of the cliff and that your friend says you know I'm just so committed I believe I know in my heart of hearts that that twig is going to bear my body weight it's going to save me and so with a smile on my face I leap off the edge when he catches the twig it snaps and he plunges to his death. You have a look down and you see a very thin ledge and you say there's no way I'm going to land on that ledge there's no way that that ledge can hold me there's no way that that ledge won't snap off there's no way that I can sustain the fall and say close your eyes and you jump and you land on the ledge and you're saved. Your friend had great faith right your friend was passionately committed to their belief you're scared to death they're dead you're alive why because it's not the amount of faith you have it's the it's the validity of the object of your faith that matters. Somebody who's passionate enough to blow themselves up in a crowded market for their God is certainly passionate but if their God is not the true God they're nothing but a fool and a destructive people killing earth destroying fool at that. If you're timid and you're scared but you place your faith in the right object and the worthy object then you will be connected with God you have saving faith. You know there's a camp actually for kids I heard this week in California it's sort of an atheist camp it's kind of a counterbalanced all these kids going to Christian camps and during the week of camp they help the kids to create their own religion create a religion that works for you. You know imagine standing on the ledge and the bear is coming down to you and so just create an imaginary ledge a ledge that works for you and if you have an imaginary ledge a ledge that works for you when you leap off the edge you will be what you will be dead. You could be sitting here this morning and you could say you know I have so many doubts you know what it's all right go to Jesus. You might say but I don't even like any Christians it's all right go to Jesus you can say I'm bitter about the church I was raised in that's all right go to Jesus go to Jesus with an informed faith with all your doubts with all your fears with all your hesitation place your faith in the only one who is worthy of your faith don't put your faith in the church don't put your faith in other Christians don't put your faith in your parents religion put your faith in Jesus. So how you connect it with God usually there's trial and adversity that opens us up to our need then we must put our faith in Jesus in a third. We're connected to God because of the work of Jesus Christ the substitutionary work of Jesus Christ faith is only made possible because Jesus substitutes himself for us here it's just this simple the Bible says that he takes our place and we get his so how do we see this in the passage we see this that Jesus because Jesus gets polluted we can be made pure the woman is unclean. To be ceremonially unclean by the way there were really two primary ways two of the most prominent ways that you could be unclean was to be touched someone a woman in her menstrual cycle a woman who was bleeding or to touch a dead body which in this passage we see Jesus do what he does both let's just see the beauty of Jesus he comes into the pollution of our world. And he says I will take the pollution of this world on myself I will bear the pollution of this world she was unclean the cleanliness laws of Israel were were for the people's good for for the protection of the spread of infectious diseases but they're also way of communicating that there's a holy God and an unclean people can't just saunter into his presence. And when this woman this unclean woman who by the way should not even have been in that crowd that was forbidden that's why she doesn't want to be outed right that's why she wants to touch his garments in secret and then and then sneak away when she touches Jesus Jesus knows he's been touched because he says what power has gone out of me. What's he saying I must become weak for her to become strong I must become sick for her to be made well I must become foul for her to become pure. He takes on our pollution our sin our guilt our foulness Isaiah chapter 59 says your inequities have made a separation between you and God your sins have hidden his face from you we are separated from God now if if her unclean this leaves her where does it go it doesn't just dissipate into thin air it's taken on him that's why the New Testament the Apostle Paul tells us that God made the one who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf the pure one becomes polluted so that the polluted might become what. Pure see to be connected with God is to become pure because Jesus takes our place and gives us his we see it in another place in this passage Jesus is too late to get the gyros house and the little girl dies but here's what I want you to see Jesus dies the true death so that we who are in him connected to him only sleep. When Jesus is late getting to her house they come and they say to Jesus don't come anymore she's dead Jesus says to the father you believe when they arrive at the house Jesus says they say to him she's dead and Jesus says no she's sleeping and they all laugh now just for clarification say she's not sleeping she's dead this is a resurrection she's dead so what is Jesus mean when he says she's sleeping what he means is. She does not die the eternal death she does not die the ultimate death because in Jesus isn't in a hurry to get there because he knows that he'll die that death not her you see the death that can really kill you is to be forever separated from God. This little girl is not forever separated from God who will experience separation from God Jesus and because he will die that death she's sleeping Christian churches through the years have had people buried out on the church property but they never called those places of burial graveyards because a graveyard means of a place of the dead of the tombs. They always call them cemeteries because the cemetery the word cemetery means in place of the sleeping if you are connected with Jesus you don't die you just sleep you want to see beautiful substitution when Jesus heals the woman what does he call her daughter. It's the only place he ever uses that endearing term only time from Jesus lips to this unclean woman do you know how she would have been regarded how foul she would have been regarded and Jesus calls her what daughter and then when he goes into the bedroom of the little girl and there she lays on the bed. He takes her by the hand the gospel of Mark says he says to her Talitha come little one I say to you get up if you study the original language as you know what you learn he didn't just say to her get up it didn't just say him personally little child but he used an intimate the intimacy of a mother who would go into the bedside of her little child on it on a bedside. On a day of school and sit on the edge of the bed and a mother would take that sleeping child's hand and what would the mother say to that child sweetheart honey in the most intimate terms Jesus said little baby sweetheart time to wake up I don't know about you but if you're separated from God then you've been given a name. You live with the names of self-alothing we give them to ourselves we got them from our parents we got them from other people their names like fatty ugly worthless unwanted stupid some of you were literally given those names you'll never amount to anything someone told you coach a teacher a parent
Jesus took those names they call Jesus a bastard they call Jesus a drunkard they said Jesus was filled with evil demons he was the son of Satan they hung on a tree and they spat on him he took the foul names so that you could be called what daughter honey. Sweetheart by the living God if you're not connected with God you don't want in this family you don't want this father to be your father there's no one like him why not you run and throw yourself at his feet too. We bow our heads to pray I'm going to invite our servers for communion to come and take their place but you bow your heads and pray and we'll do business with God as we prepare ourselves to as we prepare ourselves to gather at the table of our father why don't you bow your head right now and if you want to do business with God you might want to say Lord I want to connect with you I realize that I've been a fool and I've run from you and I've tried to stab the wounds of my heart with with every other doctor but you but Lord I'm ready to be done with doctors I don't know everything I need to know and I'm afraid but I'm going to put my faith in you I want to be connected to you I want you to make me pure I want to hear you call me son daughter and know that I belong to you forever come on right now quit messing around sometimes we can say in church and it's not an exaggeration it's a matter of life or death it's a matter of heaven or hell some of you have been listening now for weeks and months some for years it's time to jump it's an informed jump but it's time to jump and say Lord I give my life into your hands like that woman I reach out and take hold of you because I believe I believe Lord this is our prayer in Jesus name amen amen