A woman who had had a hemorrhage for twelve years, and had endured much at the hands of many physicians, and had spent all that she had and was not helped at all, but rather had grown 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 will get well.” Mark 5:25-28
Is there a hemorrhage in your life?
A hemorrhage is a loss of blood. It can happen slowly over time and make one weak and sickly as it had this woman. Or it can happen suddenly and massively as when a vessel ruptures, causing loss of life. If there is a hemorrhage in your body, you are in trouble physically. But it may be that there is another kind of hemorrhage in your life.
A rupture can take place in your marriage relationship, and you discover the love that was holding you together is oozing away. It might take place in your spiritual life. Sin, deadly spiritual cancer that it is, eats its way into the fabric of your soul, until ounce by ounce, your spiritual vitality has slipped away. That hemorrhage can take place in a relationship between you and another brother or sister in Christ, so that you can no longer stand to see them coming. Once you were close. But now that relationship is so bitter, you sit on separate sides of the church and shop in separate stores. Because of it, the joy of your salvation is ebbing away.
Is there a hemorrhage in your life? There was in the life of this woman. And it had lasted twelve years. How many years has it been going on in your life? How many years has sin been sapping your vitality and draining you physically, spiritually and emotionally? How long?
In this dear woman’s life, it was chronic, but it was also cumulative. Year by year, it grew worse and worse instead of better and better. So it is with a hemorrhage of any kind. You either cure it, or it kills you. It’s just a matter of time. What sin is festering in your soul, that if you allow it to go on and claim your heart, it will claim your home and your health and your hope?
Where Are You Looking For A Cure?
No one looks for a cure unless that person can acknowledge being sick. This woman endured many things of many physicians. She did so because she was desperate. How desperate are you?
Let me give you a description of her plight in the words of the great preacher Dr. G. Campbell Morgan.
“On account of the peculiar form of physical disease from which she was suffering, she was excommunicated from the temple, not allowed to mingle with the worshipers. By that selfsame law she was divorced from her husband, not allowed to live with him. By that same law she was ostracized from society, and in appalling loneliness, she had lived for twelve years. Twelve years of a disease that weakened her day by day, until all her physical powers were feeble. Twelve years shut out from the fellowship of the saints as they went up to the house of God. Twelve years shut away from the comradeships of home and the fellowship of her husband. Twelve years shut out from all the circle of her friends and acquaintances. Twelve years of suffering and weakness. Twelve years in which she had done all she knew for healing, and spent all that she had, and was nothing bettered, but grew worse.” (The Westminister Pulpit, volume 8, 239)
How have you been dealing with the hemorrhage in your life? Where have you turned for help? Have you become so desperate that you spent all your energies, and all your ideas, and all your hope, leaving you more helpless and more hopeless than in the beginning?
Sometimes we become so exasperated with our situation that we decide not to fight it anymore? We decide to give in to our sickness and let it have the best of us. We decide to give in to our sin and let it run whatever course it chooses to take in our lives. We are spent and hopeless and have no where else to turn.
This woman had heard about Jesus. But she wasn’t there that day just to hear a story. She came seeking a Savior, a Helper, who had the power to deliver her from her circumstances.
What Do You Believe About Jesus?
Can He deliver me? Can He deliver you? That is the question that needs an answer. If He can, then Christianity has relevance. If He can’t, I am wasting my time writing, and you are wasting your time reading what I have written.
Mark tells us that after hearing about Jesus, this feeble, frail, fragile woman began to push her way through the crowd in order to make her way into Jesus’ presence. What was it that prompted her to make this journey? What clicked inside her mind and heart, making her sense that He was the One. Many of you have heard stories about Jesus, but it has never clicked inside you that Jesus is the One you need. He is the One who can heal that hemorrhage in your life.
I will never forget the testimony of one dear woman as she shared how that connection was made in her heart. There was a hemorrhage in her marriage relationship. The relationship itself was near death. They were newcomers to America. Yet, every day she expected him to tell her he was divorcing her, abandoning her alone half-way around the world. But one day, as she prayed, she caught a glimpse of the greatness of God. Her spiritual understanding was opened, and she saw a God who was great enough to save her husband and save her marriage. In that brief moment, she reached out to God in faith, asking Him to do what she in all of her efforts and energies had not been able to do. God work a mighty miracle in the life of that family. The husband was saved and so was the marriage!
Is something beginning to click inside of you? When the connection was made in her heart, she pressed through the crowd and touched His cloak, for she thought, “If I just touch His garments I will get well.”
Have You Touched Him and Has He Touched You?
29Immediately the flow of her blood was dried up; and she felt in her body that she was healed of her affliction. 30Immediately Jesus, perceiving in Himself that the power proceeding from Him had gone forth, turned around in the crowd and said, “Who touched My garments?” 31And His disciples said to Him, “You see the crowd pressing in on You, and You say, ‘Who touched Me?’” 32And He looked around to see the woman who had done this. 33But the woman fearing and trembling, aware of what had happened to her, came and fell down before Him and told Him the whole truth. Mark 5:29-33
Do you know why she touched Him? She touched Him because she had a need. She touched Him because she believed He could meet that need. There were two blind men who asked Jesus to heal them. Do you know what He asked them before He touched them? He said, “Do you believe that I am able to do this?”
You might answer “yes” without batting an eye. But that means nothing! Why? Because you are yet come to that conclusion in your heart. You are saying “yes” with your head only. When Jesus asked these blind men if they believed that He was able, although they were blind, they had an internal vision of a God with whom noting was impossible. When they said, “Yes” then Jesus touched their eyes.
Do you believe that He is able to seal the hemorrhage that is sapping the life from your soul? I tell you that there were hundreds in that crowd that day who would have said ”Yes” with their heads. And all of them were touching Jesus too. But there was only one woman who was healed, and she was healed immediately.
Jesus said that it was because of her faith that she was healed. It was a faith that was expressed—not just by her head—but by her hands and her feet and her heart. When she reached out to touch just the hem of His garment, a connection was made that tapped the power source of heaven. There was such a surge of power that Jesus said, “Who touched My garments?”
Have you eyes been opened to Jesus as the ONE and ONLY ONE who can help you? He wants to be your Savior and your Deliverer. He wants you to be able to testify to a time when you touched Him and He touched you?
Something changed in that woman’s life that day. 29Immediately the flow of her blood was dried up; and she felt in her body that she was healed of her affliction. Twelve years of sickness came to an end in that moment.Twelve years of suffering came to an end in that instant.Twelve years of hopelessness vanished like a vapor.Twelve years of hurt and heartache was erased.
But something more significant than that happened in her life.
This Woman Experienced a Transformation in Her Relationship with God.
Let me tell you why. Did you know that Jesus said a word to her that he never said to anyone else in all the stories of the New Testament? Never—not even to His mother or to His friends Mary and Martha.
Before I tell you that word, let me remind you of where and what this woman had been for twelve years. For twelve years, she had been abandoned by her society. She was an outcast from the community of faith. If she was married, the law would have demanded that she live apart from her husband for all of these twelve years. She was an orphan of hope and happiness. But in the instant that she touched Jesus, He looked down into her eyes, and this is the word that He spoke to her orphaned heart. HE called her “DAUGHTER.” He would use that title in reference to others. But it was never bestowed by Him on any woman but this one. When He called her daughter, she knew, not only that she was healed of her sickness, but also of her separation from God. She was accepted. She was adopted. She was His own!
That very thing can happen to you in your circumstances. If you reach out in faith to this same Jesus, you will find His power to be effective in your life. You will also find that it is both His passion and pleasure to make you His child. In an instant, you would no longer be an outcast. You would no longer be an orphan of hope and happiness. You would be adopted as His very own!
She thought, “If I just touch His garments, I will get well.” Mark 5:28 She did, and she was, and the same thing can happen to you!
Photo by Nathan Dumlao