TAKING SMALL STEPS
Posted by: henkf <henkf@...>
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TAKING SMALL STEPS …
TEXT: Mk 5.24-35
v 31 - …And His disciples said to Him, You see the crowd pressing on You, and do You say, Who touched Me? …This is an electrifying question, especially when one realizes who is asking it and under what circumstances.
You really cannot escape the thrill of it.
The tingle of excitement grips our hearts when we think of Christ stopping in response to the touch of this poor nameless woman.
A small step.
These words march to the vestibule of our hearts and knock on the door. This incident takes place in a city street - vv 24 & 27 It isn’t hard to imagine the time and place. It isn’t difficult to hear the murmurs of conversation as the procession pushes thru the narrow byways. People are caught up in the infection of curiosity and walking along in their very midst, wedged in the tightly packed passage is...Someone...
This One who walks like a king is named Jesus. They call Him the Nazarene, the Galilean. Any outcast could tell you about Him.
v 22 tells us that one of the synagogue rulers named Jairus had asked Jesus to restore his little girl who was dying.
Also in that crowd, however, was a woman. Her name is not known. It doesn’t matter. She is typical of countless cases of endless pain and suffering... For 12 yrs, she endured. 12 yr is a long time. She agonized from something that caused persistent hemorrhage - chronic, constant bleeding.
v 26 says “she suffered a great deal under the care of many doctors and had spent all she had, yet instead of getting better she grew worse.” [NIV]
I understand this woman’s torture, her agony and frustration. I’ve often said, “I think we live despite what Dr’s do to us and not necessarily because of it.” This woman had spent all that she had and every new day was another hopeless dawn. Every sunset was stained with her blood and her pain.
What did she do?
She took one small step.
It was daring. Her heart was probably pounding inside her chest but it was worth trying. If it failed? She was no stranger to failure. After all, this is the Great Physician. Her heart was certain! vv 27-28
Incidentally, she was cured completely and immediately! v 29.
Recognizing that magnetic touch of faith amid the pressure of the crowd, Christ asked that terrific question,
“Who touched me?” v 31
“And he looked round about to see her that had done this thing.” v 32
Without a doubt, something unspeakable passed between them, and “knowing what had happened to her, came and fell at his feet and trembling told him the whole truth.” v 33 [NIV]
Then He answered her:
Not in scorn at her action , not in scorn at her resentment, not in scorn at her anger at her presumption , not in ridicule at her faith, but in tones of sympathy, compassion and indescribable incomprehensible love:
“Daughter, thy faith hath made thee whole; go in peace, and be whole of thy plague.” v 34
This heroic woman took a small step… Good story?
No. That is the record. These are the facts. This is a matter of history! She had no money. Only faith.
She took a small step and she made great strides...she touched Him in faith, in desperate, deliberate, believing faith and He stopped!
The touch of 1 anonymous woman in a crowd halted the Lord of Glory. That is the amazing, marvelous, glorious truth of this incident.
She touched Him. So can we.
The touch of a human hand had the power to arrest God in the streets. Yes, to stop Him. To make Him aware of our problems, pain & petitions.
Someone might say: “That’s impossible. God isn’t interested in me. What does He care what happens to me, one measly little individual in all of time and history. Who am I? What am I that God should take special notice of me?”
David asked those same haunting questions. Ps 8.1-4 Ps 115.12a
There’s the record. Black and white. Stopped by the touch of one sick woman, He turned around and about. He hesitated and because just one sick, simple, unnamed woman took a small step to TOUCH THE HEM OF HIS GARMENT, HE TOUCHED HER BACK AND MADE HER WHOLE.
This is the One who conquered death, defeated Satan, all the legions of hell cannot stop...the one who is now the Kings of Kings and Lord of Lords. Hallelujah
We need to touch Him. O, how we need to touch Him. Just one small step...to seize the moment as this woman with such great faith!
Many today are thronging Him...it is easy to throng Him and yet never to touch Him. There are a great many people in churches who are thronging Jesus, seeking Him, getting close perhaps, but never actually touching Him. In this matter of eternal importance, coming close is simply not enough. It’s like missing a bus...you can miss it by one second and that’s pretty close, but the fact is, you’ve missed the bus. It’s gone and you’ve been left behind.
Thronging saves no one. Coming near Jesus will not heal you. We will have to touch for ourselves. You can “feel close” in the crowd without actually touching the Lord. This is precisely the trouble with some. They are following the crowd and not the Christ.
Not many of us are really in touch with the Master. Because we are not in touch there is no vitality in our spiritual lives. There is no heart in our prayers and no soul in our songs. Because we are out of touch with the Lord, we are lost in the crowd, and separated from our only Savior.
The Old Book records some amazing promises, some startling assurances, if we would but trust them. When you study your Bible, when you obey the gospel, you take such a small step but o, what strides you can make!
You learn how to:
Harbor no grudges To forgive those who hate you and hurt you To love those who treat you unkindly and even unjustly To pray for those who give you pain and grieve you To believe, to trust, repent in humility and confess the Christ as the Majestic King He is, the very Son of God, and to be buried with Him in baptism.
You learn forgiveness. For most of us, that is one great stride. You learn to right situations that have been wrong even when it means humbling yourselves, swallowing your pride and risking a snub or a slight.
There’s risk involved, the risk of reach.
I like to tell a good story. I think they can oftentimes be helpful. I believe that if used properly they point us to the truth and they make our weary spirits soar. I’d like to tell one here. I would have preferred to slip it in but decided that it was best to first announce it.
It was an afternoon in the early summer. There was a strange quiet on the battle-field. In the bright sunshine the air was balmy and had a breath of garden in it. By some grotesque wonder, a bird was singing near a hand. On the firing step, with his rifle lying in a groove lay his uniform stained with blood and mud. On his face, so young yet strangely marked with lines of war that made him look old, was a wistful faraway expression. He was enjoying the sunshine and the quiet of the quiet of the strange lull in the firing. The heavy guns had been silent. There was no sound to break eerie stillness. Suddenly, a butterfly fluttered into view and landed on the ground at the end of his rifle. It was a strange visitor to a battleground...so out of place...so out of keeping with the grim setting... Rifles and bayonets. Barbed wire and parapets. Shell holes and twisted bodies. But there it was. A gorgeous creature. Wings like gold leaves splashed with fall colors, swaying in the warm breath of spring. As this war-weary youngster watched the butterfly he was no longer a private in field grey. He was a boy once more, fresh and clean, swinging thru a sunny field, knee deep in sunshine and clover. That strange visitor to the front line trench brought back to him the joys of his boyhood when he collected butterflies. It spoke to him of days in peace. It was a symbol of the lovelier things in life. It was an emblem of the eternal, a reminder that there was still calm and beauty in the world, that somewhere there was color and fragility, perfume and flowers, and gardens that were green. He forgot the enemy a few hundred yards across no man’s land. He forgot the danger, deprivation and suffering. He forgot everything as he watched that butterfly. A heartbeat of normalcy. WITH all the hunger in his heart, with the resurrection of dreams and visions that he thought were gone, he reached out his hand toward that butterfly. His fingers moved slowly, cautiously, lest he frighten away this welcome visitor to the battlefield. In showing one kind of caution, he forgot another. The butterfly was just beyond his reach... So he stretched, forgetting that watchful eyes were waiting for a target. He reached with infinite care and patience until he had just a little distance to go. He could almost touch those marvelous wings. And then... PING! A single sniper’s bullet found its mark. His stretching, reaching fingers relaxed. His hand flopped flat on the ground. For this private soldier in field grey the war was over. An official bulletin issued that afternoon said:
“All was quiet on the western front.”
And for a boy in field grey it was a quiet that no guns would ever break.
[This story is paraphrased from the novel by Erich Maria Remarque, “All Quiet On the Western Front.”]
Why take all this time telling a story? This story? Because I think it will help to register truth in our minds like bullets flying in the air at night and fix it firmly in our hearts so that unlike the forgetful Jews, WE WILL REMEMBER! This brave but ailing woman in our text was NOT AFRAID to run the risk of reach! She ran. She risked. She reached. She touched and she recovered!
There is always risk...you can’t escape it. As long as we live in this world there will be risk in reaching out. WE not only risk rejections, we risk acceptance. And acceptance requires reaction and response.
There are many in our time who are abnormally afraid. Fear afflicts literally hundreds of thousands of people to-day. Agoraphobia is the fear of open spaces, while claustrophobia is the fear of being shut in. Arachnophobia is the fear of spiders. There are timid souls who avoid getting on a ladder but the saddest is those who avoid high standards and ideals because they are content with low ones.
I long to reach out and touch the hem of His garment, don’t you?
You know, the night sky does something to the star gazer. One does not remain the same after seeing a sunset, or catching a glimpse into the heart of a flower, or watching the tiny fledglings in a nest. We receive a reverent uplifting of our souls from the Absolute One, The Caring Creator of such a vast beyond.
It does us good to look up and see Orion, or Andromeda, or even the Big and Little Dipper. It enlarges us and in-spires us to march to the Magnificent and Majestic affirmations of the Psalms...the poetry of God Himself.
Out of the horrors of WW II there came a poem written by a 19 yr old flyer who met his death serving with the Royal Canadian Air Force. Pilot Officer John Gillespie Magee, Jr. called his poem, “High Flight”
“O, I have slipped the surly bonds of earth, and danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings,
Sunward I’ve climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth of sun-split clouds and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of - wheeled and soared and swung high on the sunlit silence.
Hovering there, I’ve chased the shouting wind along and flung my eager craft thru footless halls of air.
And while with silent lifting mind I’ve trod the high untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand and touched the face of God.”
The Christian is to seek the things above the sky; to seek them as the needle seeks the pole, as the flower seeks the sun, as the river seeks the sea, and as the eagle seeks the ceiling of the sky. Not enough of us today are hitching our wagon to the stars. We think it enough to couple a trailer to our car.
Col 3.1-17
When Paul says, “Set your affections on things above,” he is speaking beyond the stars. It is difficult because we have fallen in love with Toyland and our playthings are all too often given a position of prominence in our lives. It is hard for us to believe the truth that this life is but a preparation for a greater and more glorious life to come.
Once for all, we must put aside and out of our minds the notion that the purpose of life here is to enjoy ourselves, to have a good time, to be deliciously happy, to make lots and lots and lots of money, and to live in ease and comfort. That is not what life is all about. We were put here for a purpose. That purpose is revealed in the Bible. We aren’t left guessing. That purpose is not superficial pleasures.
“To fear God and keep his commandments. That is the whole duty of man.”
No one owes you a living. Not your parents, not your government and you do not have a “right” to happiness. You have a “right” to nothing. You deserve hell. I believe that God wants His children to be “happy” as defined by Him, but it is not a matter of our right, but of His mercy. The time for drifting or sleeping or wishful thinking is over. The state of our world today makes that a very dangerous pastime.
In conclusion, let me try to tie up all the loose ends. This lesson is about taking small steps and making great strides. It’s about the faith to touch as this anonymous woman in our text has taught and it’s about the risk of reach.
When this unfortunate woman reached out in faith and touched the hem of His garment, what did she risk? From her point of view she risked everything. From God’s point of view she had nothing to lose. She had everything to gain and nothing to lose.
We all want to live forever. And, we will if we but first give Christ the chance to save us. Take a small step...
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