God’s Word for You

Mark 5:31-34 The hand, the voice, the face

by Pastor Timothy Smith on Saturday, October 15, 2022

31 His disciples said to him, “You see the crowd pressing around you, and yet you say, ‘Who touched me?’” 32 But Jesus kept looking around to see who had done it. 33 The woman was afraid, and trembling, because she knew what had happened to her. Yet she came and fell down in front of him and told him the whole truth. 34 He said to her, “Daughter, your faith has made you well. Go in peace and be healed of your suffering.”

Sometimes humble people require a special kind of ministry. Think of a coach who has been drilling teamwork into his players so much that a player who is naturally shy gives up on ever thinking he should shoot a basketball, but always passes it to a teammate. That player needs to be encouraged: We value you, too! Take the shot! So it was with this healed woman. She was afraid, to the point of trembling, when Jesus stopped and asked who touched him. The disciples were amazed. How many dozens of people were touching him even now? How could he ask such a thing? But the humble woman who thought nothing of herself needed to be encouraged. So Jesus asked the question to draw her out, to teach her something about faith.

It was this way in the Garden after the Fall. Adam and Eve were terrified, but God came asking questions. When he said, “Where are you?” (Genesis 3:9), it wasn’t because he didn’t already know. When he asked, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the forbidden tree?” (Genesis 3:11), it wasn’t because he didn’t have that information, either. He was drawing out Adam’s confession of sin in order to proclaim forgiveness to him.

Here in the streets of Capernaum, Jesus had not forgotten about the dying daughter of the synagogue ruler Jairus. They were still on their way to that house. But this woman needed to be found. He kept looking, turning this way and that. The healed woman soon realized that he wasn’t going to stop this until she came forward. Trembling, probably with tears streaming down her cheeks, she came and fell at his feet.

Here at his feet, at this spot, she was home. There were the feet of Jesus her Lord. There was dust kicked up by his footfall. There was the brush of the robe, that beautiful robe, that she had reached out to grasp. If only time could stop. Who would ever want this moment to end? My Savior is here before me! He has been asking for me, and I only want to bow here, fall here, collapse here, to worship him!

This was heaven, a beautiful, peaceful, wonderful moment exactly like our future life in heaven. Our Savior will be there before us! He will have called us there, and we will only want to bow there, fall there, collapse there, to worship him! What tears of joy, what emotion will swell up as if to burst through the chest and throat and make us hoarse before we can even try to utter a single word or to sing a single note! All around us will be singing, and we will add our voices to the sound like the roar of rushing waters and like loud peals of thunder, shouting: “Hallelujah! For our Lord God Almighty reigns!” (Revelation 19:6).

Here in the streets of the city, the moment could not go on forever, but it could be savored; it could be carried out to its wonderful conclusion. She confessed what she did, and she wasn’t confessing a sin. She was confessing her faith. He let her tell her tale, a beautiful tale of faith, trust, and hope. He wiped away all her fear with a single word: “Daughter.” The Lord was always there for her, always listening to her prayer, always waiting for the perfect moment to heal her. It was in his own time, according to his own plan, but he was there.

It’s hard to imagine why, why would God make me wait for a thing that I ask for that seems to fall completely and reasonably into his plan? Why won’t he give me what I beg him for, night after night, in the darkness of my little room, wondering how asking for a blessing is somehow not being answered yet? But he will answer. He will give when the moment is perfect for me and for other people in my life. I am not the only sparrow in the flock, after all. He also wants me to know that he is the one who gives. He is not a vending machine that I walk up to, a button I press, expecting a blessing to rumble down and come to rest right in front of me. So like the healed woman, I learn to wait. I must learn to pray even when the same prayer has been prayed for a year, or ten years, or twelve.

“Your faith has made you well.” Jesus’ custom was sometimes “to ascribe his miracles to the faith of those for whom they were done.” (LW 27:304). Why? Why should he give her any credit for the gift he gave, the healing he worked, the power that came from him and only from him? Because he is delighted when we receive his gift. “It delights him so much that “he praises the act by which we prove that we have received the gift” (Deutschlander, Your Kingdom Come p. 142). So even though he was the one who made her well, he credits her faith as righteousness (Romans 4:5).

“Go in peace.” The pastor forgiving his member says: “As you believe, so let it be done to you. And I, by the command of Jesus Christ our Lord, forgive you all your sins in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen. Go in peace.” What troubled you need trouble you no more.

“Be healed of your suffering.” The word for “suffering” here can also refer to being whipped (Nahum 3:2). Her pain and her condition had been terrible, unbearable, but it was all over. She could go home, she could go to worship. Her family could touch her, hug her, hold her, once again. Everything that had been taken from her was returned and restored, but along with it, she now knew the hand, the voice, and the face of her Savior Jesus. We look forward to the day when those things will be revealed to us, too.

In Christ,
Pastor Timothy Smith

 

Browse Devotion Archive