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Village SDA Church

Ron Kelly

This One Thing

Father, we are on the cusp of a new year, and I pray that the decisions we make now would be decisions that would shape this year for Your glory, for the well-being and the functionality of our lives.

We put ourselves in your hands now, praying that the Holy Spirit would direct and that we would be sensitive to your impress.

May this truly be a holy interaction with your word.

We surrendered you present, you teaching, and we following your lead.

If you have your Bibles, open them up to the book of Mark chapter 10 verse 51.

I want to couch the presentation this morning in a concern.

And the concern was a legitimate 1 and the privilege and the privilege was a legitimate 1.

This is the Roman account, Mark's account of Jesus' last journey out of Jericho to Jerusalem.

And of course, he met a man who would not be ignored his name was Bartimaeus.

And Bartimaeus hears a stir in the crowd wants to know what's going on and he asked who it is when he finds out it's Jesus he stands up and starts crying Jesus son of David have mercy on me they tell him to be quiet it's like pouring gas on a fire he gets louder and Jesus says I want to talk to him it's a one-on-one audience with Jesus although there's a larger listening group and Jesus asked him a question he says in verse 51 what do you want me to do for you?

Now, that's a beautiful question, but there may be times when you don't want to tell everybody who's listening what it is that you want done.

Take your Bibles and turn back to Matthew chapter 4.

Matthew chapter 4, I want to lay the groundwork for where we are geographically.

In Matthew chapter 4, we hear in verse 12 and 13 about the migration of Jesus from a man of Nazareth to a man of Capernaum.

It says in verse 12, now when Jesus heard that John had been taken into custody, he withdrew to Galilee.

And leaving Nazareth, he came and settled in Capernaum, which is by the sea in the region of Zebulun and Naphtali.

Chapter 9 is where the narrative begins in the book of Matthew that we're going to focus on today.

And I just want us to get a picture in the flow of history with Jesus.

In Matthew chapter 9, it says, getting into a boat, Jesus crossed over the sea and he came to his own city.

Now just before this, Jesus has healed the demoniacs of Gergesa and he has quieted the storm on the lake.

Now I'm not gonna focus in Matthew's account, even though it's the longest book, I'm going to focus in Marks.

Now this story is in Matthew 9, which we're leaving, and we're moving over to Mark 5, because Mark tells us more of the details.

There's been about a 5 or 6 mile boat ride across the Sea of Galilee.

They've gone from the east side where it's kind of wild and the pigs were herding and the demons were cast out of legion.

And now we've gone on a northwest journey across the Sea of Galilee and we find ourselves in Capernaum, Jesus' town.

And when he gets there, he's an instant sensation.

The masses have not turned away from him yet.

And 2 things happen almost simultaneously, which seem to create a problem.

Mark, Chapter 5, verse 21, it says, When Jesus had crossed over again in the boat to the other side, a large crowd gathered around him, and so he stayed by the seashore.

1 of the synagogue officials named Jairus came up, and upon seeing him, fell at his feet.

And he implored him earnestly, saying, My little daughter is at the point of death.

Please come and lay your hands on her so that she will get well and live.

And went off with him, and a large crowd was following him and pressing on him.

A woman who had a hemorrhage for 12 years and had endured much at the hands of many physicians and had spent all that she had and was not helped by all, but rather grew worse.

After hearing about Jesus, she came up in the crowd behind him and touched his cloak.

For she thought, if I just touch his garments, I'll get well.

And immediately the flow of her blood was dried up.

And immediately Jesus, perceiving in himself that power proceeded from him and had gone forth, turned around to the crowd and said, Who touched my garments?

His disciples said to him, you see the crowd pressing on you and you say who touched me?

And he looked around to see the woman who had done this but the woman fearing and trembling aware of what had happened came and fell down before him and told him the whole truth and he said to a daughter your faith has made you well Go in peace and be healed of your affliction.

And while he was still speaking, they came from the house of the synagogue officials saying your daughter has died.

I started with Bartimaeus's question, or the question given to Bartimaeus, what do you want me to do?

And this may be the impetus behind a woman being very secretive and very careful, not really wanting an encounter with Jesus, a verbal dynamic dialogue, because explaining what she wanted him to do in front of all these people might be the last thing she wanted to do.

I want to leave with 3 words in your mind when you walk out of this sanctuary today from this story that shape your 2019 experience.

It's been 18 years since many people sat around with their newly purchased generators waiting to see if the world would come to an end.

And here we are almost a fifth of the way through a new century.

And the years are rolling by because the days and months are rolling by.

And what I want to do is I want at the beginning of 2019, I want you to go away with 3 words and think and pray about what these 3 words mean to you in this new year.

When we look at this story, we see 4 very intentional living beings or persons the first intentional person that I want us to understand that we're looking at is a man.

He's a man who's associated with the synagogue, he has significance, he's religious He has influence.

Perhaps this is why he can break through the crowd and get Jesus attention.

This man is intentional because his heart is walking around on the outside in the form of a 12 year old girl.

For 12 years, 1 woman in the story has been sick trying to get better, and for 12 years, 1 man's heart has been bonding deeply with a little baby he held in his arms, and now his dear sweet 1 who's slipping away.

If there's intentionality in this story, it's certainly in the life of Jairus, because it doesn't matter to him how many people he bumps into and probably has an entourage making away.

The second intentional person in this story is obviously the woman with the flow of blood.

The Bible tells us that she's had 3 major parts of her life rearranged.

Her physical well-being, her financial well-being, and her social well-being.

She's afflicted with some type of disease of which we know not what it is, but it is limiting her relatability in social spiritual settings.

She is looking for a moment to encounter Jesus, but it would be better if it worked out like it did, or at least partway like it did, because touching his cloak and slipping away would be a whole lot less embarrassing than telling her whole story.

1 commentator says her malady was especially afflicting for not only did it unfit her for all the relationships of life, but it was popularly regarded as the direct consequence of sinful habits.

Now the third person or being that I want you to see as intentional in this story is Satan himself.

The word in the book of Luke is choked Jesus with the crowds.

The devil has an exceptionally focused purpose in life, and in this case, he would like to frustrate both people's interests.

The woman, who has a flow of blood for 12 years, and the man, who has a 12-year-old daughter.

He wants neither of their requests to be granted.

He piles the circumstances full of people.

In this case, he makes it almost impossible that either are going to get what they want.

Now we know that the story has a big interruption in it, which I don't want to get to quite yet, and that there's a pause long enough for the woman, probably middle-aged, probably not elderly, this middle-aged woman, maybe even young, we don't know, but there is a long enough pause for her to tell her story.

I highly doubt that that pause is the substantive reason why Jesus wouldn't make it on time to see Jairus' daughter.

But there is at least 3 intentional individuals in this story.

Now, trouble tends to bring our lives into focus.

It's not something that we have to have to come into focus, which is why my first word for you this morning is intentional.

I wanna know how intentional, God wants to know how intentional you are about what things ought to be evaluated and what things ought to be changed in your life as you point forward.

Some of the decisions you make right now are going to change the direction you go farther down the road.

If anybody should be intentional, since we know there's an endgame and there's a meeting of Jesus, it ought to be us.

We ought to say in our lives, this matters, this doesn't, This is an opportunity, but this privilege or responsibility is more important.

But the most intentional person in this story is undoubtedly Jesus.

Jesus has a plan, and in Jesus' plan, there is the ability to heal Jairus' daughter, and there's time enough to talk with a woman who's been suffering for a long time with the wrong ideas about his father.

It's not so much that the woman touches his clothes, is that Jesus stops everybody to have an interrogation and then a dialogue about it.

Jesus is not stuck though, because the only instrument in Jesus' tools box is not chronological.

It's not that he has to be to Jairus' house in the timeframe that Jairus thinks.

Being just on time or just in time in Jairus' mind is different than that is in Jesus' mind.

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This One Thing

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