The Miracle is on the Way

Man, I spent half my life thinking about that. Dang, that was a quick drop. I'll let it fade out next time. I don't know who did it, but y'all going to let it fade out.

Y'all going to stress me out, my ADHD self up here.

And slow you down a little bit, right? I like that, Jim. I got to remember it. I'm ADHD.

My mind's always misfiring somewhere.

And when I slow down, I have to actually type it, guys. I have to type my prayers. I've learned, I was trying to do it the way that all these other, like, meditating people do it. I'm not as good as them, but when I type it, there's something that happens in me that slows my mental state and enables me to actually hear from God.

Sometimes there's a point where he actually starts, not audibly, but just, like, really speaking to me in those prayers.

And so when you figure out what it looks like to slow yourself down, he, I know I've repeated this like 10 times already, but he will be found by you. He loves you that much, cares about your spiritual success that much. We're going to be in Matthew today. We've got this sermon and one more sermon in the Miracle Worker series.

I hope you all have enjoyed the Miracle Worker series.

I want to throw something up there. We've got a QR code. Some of you have had a miracle happen in your life and we want to know about it. Several of you have already, a lot of you have already submitted a story and I love reading those stories.

There's kind of an indisclosed plan that I want to do with those stories, but trust me, I won't like just broadcast it without talking to you about it first.

Just excited to be able to have you share what God has done in your life. But don't be scared. If you don't want to share out loud, you should still submit the story. You can always tell me before I call you up here randomly on a Sunday.

Yeah, I don't know, man.

We learn by story. We benefit from your story. I benefit greatly from your story. I'm up here saying the same stuff every single week and I like to think that every week is a new miracle that God has performed.

And so God's been gracious and kind enough to me to give me something for you all today and hopefully every week until I'm dead, you know.

But I want to hear yours. The people next to you need to hear yours. Even if they don't want to, they tend to look at someone like me who's a pastor and be like, yeah, he's different. It's just like we look at Jesus.

We say he was different.

He was fully man and fully God. And there's a level where when we look at Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, this is why Scriptures say to fix our eyes on him. When we look at the story of Christ, we are blessed. So please, if you've got one, please share your story.

I'm going to jump right in.

And I'll give you my sermon title. And I had a joke that I wanted to do, but I'm not going to do it. It was just so serious a second ago. I took off the Hawaiian lays on my way up here.

I was going to keep them on.

My sermon title for today, toss it up there, is the miracle on the way. The miracles aren't always at the end. The miracles are on the way. And I was going to have the lays on, and I was going to say, God's done a miracle in me.

I'm a miracle in the lay, you know.

But it would have been funnier if I were wearing them. But the reason we celebrate with Hawaiian Day is because he laid his life down for us. Anyways, I'm going to dive right into Scripture. I'm going to stop with my bad jokes.

Matthew chapter 9 will begin in verse 18.

I'll read the entire passage for you. While he was saying this, a synagogue leader came and knelt before him and said, My daughter has just died. But come and put your hand on her, and she will live. He's talking to Jesus, if you weren't clear on that.

Verse 19, Jesus got up and went with him, and so did his disciples.

Just then, a woman who had been subject to bleeding for 12 years came up behind him and touched the edge of his cloak. She said to herself, If only I touch his cloak, I will be healed. Jesus turned and saw her. Take heart, daughter, he said.

Your faith has healed you.

And the woman was healed at that moment. When Jesus entered the synagogue leader's house and saw the noisy crowd and people playing pipes, they played pipes because she was dead, just to be clear. He said, Go away. Get out of here.

This girl is not dead, but asleep.

But they naturally laughed at him. After the crowd had been put outside, he went in and took the girl by the hand, and she got up. News of this spread throughout all that region. And then, on brand, Matthew changes topic.

If you weren't here last week, I talked to you about my innate frustration with Matthew because he skipped details that Mark and Luke incorporated.

I don't know why he did it, but the beauty of sticking in one passage for long enough, just like the song said, you got to slow down a little bit. You got to pause and think, Hey, why did Matthew incorporate this the way that he did it? He's got an audience. He's got a group of people.

He's being inspired in a specific way.

God decided sovereignly to inspire Matthew, Mark, and Luke in different ways. Yes, all one truth that they're speaking about, but they have a different perspective and often a different interpretation of what that means. And so, while we can line them up, the difference in their articulation of the story is extremely beneficial. I don't know if you've ever experienced that.

You've been somewhere that somebody else was.

How many of you were alive in 2020? Some of you, yeah. I mean, some people aren't alive from 2020, and it's a really sad thing. It's a really, it was a really big year.

I'm not going to say anything about it politically, but what I will say is we all experienced it differently.

I remember where I experienced it, and I've told you guys a story in this series. I experienced it pretty early in a large city, and I experienced kind of a shunning that occurred. And then I moved to a place called Joplin, Missouri, and it was almost as if they'd never heard of it. They're like, you had COVID?

I was like, yeah, I did.

It was, it was, it was just, people experienced that differently. How many of you were in Arizona at the time? Yeah, I had so many transplants. I love it.

If you were in Arizona at the time, you were kind of like Joplin.

It's like, what's COVID? That's how you guys treated it, from what I hear. I wasn't here at the time. We all experience things differently.

So Matthew, Mark, and Luke, they experienced the same miracles in a different way, so that the way that they talk about it carries a different perspective, and that's so helpful for us.

And so Matthew gives us a perspective on this miracle story that happened in Mark and Luke as well. And again, just like last week, I found myself frustrated. But I developed this sermon around the way Matthew talks about it. And again, since I sat long enough in the text, the Lord revealed something beautiful to me once again.

And it didn't happen because I know the Bible better than somebody else.

It happened because, I mean, you've got to slow down. You've got to sit long enough. You've got to seek Him where He can be found, and He will be found by you. So I want to walk through this passage a little bit more slowly, and I hope that I can help you understand that while we're all pursuing a destination, there's something God's doing on the way that is valuable.

And if you don't seek it out, you might miss the miracle that's right in front of you.

So I want to give you my first point based on the passage here. Because what happens in the beginning in verse 18 is that while Jesus is talking, now, Jesus has been dealing with a little bit. I've skipped a few passages because they weren't about miracles. And this is a miracle series.

But in those passages, you've got some Pharisees talking mess about Jesus.

You've got some questions toward Jesus. You've got some people coming who would be disciples, and they're asking weird questions. They're processing through Jesus' statements in an interesting way. Jesus makes some intense commentary.

And if I'm Jesus in this moment, when the synagogue leader that Mark and Luke tell us is named Jairus, when he comes up to me, I'm probably not having the best day.

So I want to give you my point. My point is, when it comes to understanding the miracle on the way, you've got to keep the starting point in mind. And if I'm Jesus, I'm not Jesus. Jesus is way better than me.

He's man and God.

I'm just a man. I'd be having a bad week. I don't like it when I get questioned by you people, and you're named Pharisees. Pharisees are the ruling, like, Jewish sect at the time.

I know the Romans are in play, but, like, they got clout in Judea and Galilee, and they're questioning him.

And I'd be really frustrated through the questioning. When people question me because I preach something that they disagree with, every bit of me wants to say, do you know what you're even talking about? Do you got the theological education to have an opinion on this? And so people have been questioning the Son of God about the theology that he's bringing.

And again, I'm not God, but he was.

He is. He's seated at the right hand of the Father. I'd be ticked who these people think they are. And in the midst of this, you've got a synagogue leader.

So while the Jewish leaders are questioning Jesus, you've got a synagogue leader who comes up to Jesus and is asking him to come do something for him.

This is where Jesus started. Let's look at the synagogue leader. What happens in verse 18? While he was saying this, a synagogue leader came and knelt before him and said, my daughter has just died.

So when I pause, you did it perfectly.

When I pause while I'm reading a Scripture, that means you jump in. So just let's try that again. My daughter has just died. Was his week good or bad?

They were hesitant on this.

You must not have daughters. Speaking of, Isaiah up here is going to be another girl, dad. How many? Yeah.

Sorry if y'all don't want to make it public.

My bad. It's too late now. If you stand on this stage, it's fair game. His daughter just died.

So not only is Jesus, if I'm Jesus, I'd be having a bad week.

Jesus is probably self-soothing in the perfect way that only God-man can. But the synagogue leader's daughter, he says he just died. It's a bad week. It's not a good place.

And the number one reason many of us miss the miracle that's right in front of us is because of how we started.

Maybe your past wasn't the way that you wanted it to be. Maybe you didn't have as many opportunities as somebody else. Maybe you're showing up here struggling because you're on the verge of divorce. Or maybe you're struggling with your kids.

Could be any number of items, financial, job-related.

And you've had a bad week and you showed up here and you're processing things in a particular way. You're looking for God to do a very specific thing in your life. And because of your starting point, you may struggle to see the miracle. What I love about this is that his daughter just died and he's pondering, what can I do?

And so he goes to this supposed miracle worker that is a synagogue leader.

Would have likely been a Pharisee. Would have likely, well, maybe a Pharisee. He might have been a Pharisee. He might have been, you know, more of a secular leader who's doing the organization aspect of the synagogue.

We don't know exactly who this person was, but what we do know is he would have been very well connected among the Jewish sects of the Pharisees at the time.

And the first thing he does when his daughter dies is he goes to this supposed miracle worker that his compadres disagree with. That's some pretty cool perspective. If my daughter died, I would be distraught. I might even be angry at my creator.

But this man goes to his creator.

And again, even with Jesus potentially having a bad week, could have been like, ugh, little faith. Leave me alone. But the son of God recognized that there would be a miracle that could occur. And so he starts going.

I think you need to look honestly at what's happening here.

Because it wasn't like they were just some random flat characters in the Scripture that had supernatural faith that is inaccessible to you and me. And what I want to tell you is you've got to look at the starting point. Because if you're looking for a miracle and you haven't assessed properly your starting point, you're probably going to miss it. I say, man, guys, I see it all the time.

I miss the starting point.

Like, you come in here and you've not even looked at your starting place. Let me help you. Maybe, maybe you're shutting everything out emotionally. Like, you came in here with this, this vibe.

This is, maybe God will do something, but I'm definitely not going to worship.

I'm, I'm definitely not going to go out of my way to talk to somebody. If someone smiles at me, I'm going to look at them like they're weird. You might be in that place. And I want to say this.

It's not necessarily your fault.

You might have been raised in this way. Many of us men were raised in this way that we're supposed to shut out the emotion. And we actually think it's a, it's a badge of honor to be able to stand there and be emotionally unintelligent around people. If you're in that place, that's okay, but you need to recognize it because often those of us who struggle with our own emotions, we miss the opportunity.

I can't tell you how many times I've stood in a worship set and God was doing something, but I'm just, I don't know why they're on their knees up there at the front, weirdos.

They're overemphasizing the emotional aspect of the moment right now. I'm just going to stand here and God will speak to me if he wants to. Hey, recognize that. Recognize that there's a level where you may be closed off.

Some of you recognize your starting point that you might be emotionally distraught.

You might be in this place where tons of information is coming into your brain and it's affecting your entire psyche and the way that you're operating. And when you come in here, every little thing is going to trigger you. Every little thing is going to affect you. Recognize that.

God can use the most stoic person who, or God can speak to and then use the most stoic person that walks in here.

Arms closed, fists closed. He can use you and do something powerful in you. But if you recognize it, it helps you start to look for what he could do. Those of you who come in here emotionally distraught, God can speak to and utilize you too.

But you've got to recognize where you are because the things that are going to be coming in, your starting point influences how you perceive what happens later.

And I'll get to this in a moment, but the synagogue leader in Jesus, the starting point could have influenced it. But because they were likely aware of what was happening and what God is capable of doing at the start, there was something powerful that was able to happen. Let me, let me dive forward into this. Verse 19, Jesus got up and went with him and so did his disciples.

Just then, now I didn't say, and later, in Mark you would see this Greek phrase, Kai Uthus.

This is one of the most common Greek phrases in Mark because it was like, and then, and then, and then, and then, it was like, even if it was a long time past in Mark, it looked like it was just the next thing. But right here, it's very clear from Matthew, he's saying like immediately as Jesus is walking out of the house he's in or the space he's in, it says, Just then, a woman who had been subject to bleeding for 12 years came up behind him and touched the edge of his cloak. She said to herself, if only I touch his cloak, I'll be healed. Such a cool moment.

But again, remember the starting point.

Think from the synagogue leader's perspective. Think from Jesus' perspective. Girl, it's been a long week. They've been questioning me.

What you doing pulling my cloak?

You know, from the synagogue leader, I'm like, what are you doing pulling his cloak? You bleeding too? You unclean. This is crazy.

You need to get out of town.

I'm just telling you from the ancient world's perspective. Now, we don't see this happening. But I'm just being real. If they lived in Buckeye, and they're walking through Buckeye, here's how I'd probably look.

You find it on Facebook later.

Can you believe this woman pulled the garment of the Son of God? And to think of it, the mayor was trying to get him to heal his daughter. But this lady. Sorry, I'm joking.

I don't want to be offensive to anybody.

But I just think we fail to see what's actually happening in this. Think about this woman. She had been bleeding for 12 years. If you didn't know this, in the Old Testament, there were cleanliness laws that prescribed that a woman who was bleeding was considered unclean.

Now, an unclean woman, there's a reason she wasn't in the house.

There's a reason that it was interesting or crazy inappropriate that she would touch the hem of his garment. Now, I know this happens after the healing of the leper that we see in Matthew chapter 8. But this is a crazy scenario. This woman comes up.

Well, Jesus is following the synagogue leader to the synagogue leader's home.

And again, I wish Matthew would just be a little. He didn't give us much detail. I'm going to try to preach it from Matthew. But I know that there was a crowd that was swarming around Jesus.

And she touches the hem of his garment.

And when she touches it, she says, if only I touch his cloak, I'll be healed. Now, before I tell you what happened with this woman, though many of you know what happened with this woman, I'm going to give you my second point. This woman used. Dude, she was ready.

Her starting point wasn't good.

Her starting point was bleeding for 12 years. I don't know about you, but whatever problems you've had for two years, many people come in here and say, I prayed to God, but he didn't do it. This woman, 12 years bleeding in a world where she couldn't take a regular shower, a regular bath. She couldn't figure out what was going on with her because the doctors didn't fully understand it.

She lived in a culture where she was considered completely unclean.

So the people that could do something were likely ignoring her in a significant way. 12 years. We know this from one passage in each of the Gospels. We don't even know further.

Does she have family?

Was she disconnected from her family? Did she know who they were, but they ignored her? Now, I don't want to build too much into it because the Scriptures don't tell us, but we know 12 years this woman had an issue. Her starting point is way beyond what many of us would get frustrated at God for.

But she put herself in a position.

She sought the Lord where he could be found. And he was found. Now, she couldn't get into the house. But a couple things she did.

She was looking.

It says, just then. As he's walking out, he's following Jairus. Sorry, Matthew. The synagogue leader.

Just then, this woman who had been bleeding for 12 years touched the hem of his garment thinking, if only I touch his cloak, I'll be healed.

She was looking. You want to see a miracle on the way? You got to be looking. And if you're looking for the superficial realities and the superficial growth and the superficial friends and the superficial income and the superficial stuff, that means you're not actually looking for the thing that he came to do.

How are you going to be looking for superficial and expect something supernatural?

It doesn't make sense. You got to be looking. Look at your neighbor. The point is literally look.

Please turn your head to your left or right and look at your neighbor.

You got to be looking. Tell them. You got to be looking. And if they're not making eye contact with you, don't force them.

Just pray for them.

Because they're not looking. You got to be looking. I didn't plan to bring that verse in, but it's become our theme verse for the morning. Seek him where he can be found and he will be found by you.

You got to be looking.

She was looking just then. That lady, she was waiting. She must have been waiting. She's like, that's where Jesus is.

I'm going to stay here.

Maybe I'm going to put an extra cloak on, cover up, make sure no one recognizes me. I don't want them to be stressed out. Then when he comes out, she's like, he's waiting on him. It's like those paparazzi waiting on a celebrity.

He's like, I'm going to get him.

Sorry, it's the fumes in here. It's getting me all hyper today. And when he came out, she's like, I know, y'all don't think of the woman like this. I'm not saying she's weird.

I'm saying she was faithful.

She trusted God. She believed God. She was looking and then she was waiting. She wouldn't have gotten to touch the hem of his garment if she's sitting over here at her little shack outside of town like, poor me.

And I'm not trying to, I'm not trying to diminish the difficulty that she was dealing with.

There would be a reason for her to be frustrated that her creator for not blessing her was something that everybody else was blessed with. But when rubber, well, when it came down to it, she said I could stay here and sulk or I can look and wait to see what God might do. Because if he can do that with a leper, surely all I got to do is touch the hem of his garment. She was looking.

She was waiting.

She was hoping. Do you think she was sure? No. There's no way she could have been sure.

He hadn't done that up to that point.

He had done some cool stuff. But she was just desperate enough. And then she was moving. Many people, you find yourself in this stagnant place and you're like, I'm waiting on the Lord to tell me something.

It's like, where are you waiting though?

Are you doing what he told you to do? When's the last time you opened that Bible? When's the last time you showed up at church? You're here.

Praise God.

You're moving. But when's the last time you actually moved in the direction of Jesus? You wanted to perform a miracle. You got to move toward the person who can perform the miracle.

If you're going to stay out here in your shack, frustrated, unclean, stressing out, that's not going to get you what you want to get.

But she said, I'm willing to endure a little bit of stress in order to get close to my Savior. And if I touch the hem of his garment, I have the potential to be healed. She was hoping and moving. I think not looking, not waiting, not hoping, not moving.

What do you expect?

I just, this is our culture. We do none of the things that this woman does and you expect to see a miracle from Jesus. I'm not trying to make you feel bad because God's kind enough to do it when you don't do any of that stuff. I've seen it.

I don't know why I went there.

I've seen it. But when you show yourself up and you, like you shove yourself into his presence daily, you're going to see way more of them. And you might get this one destination miracle eventually. You might get to Jairus' daughter.

You might get to this place where the one thing that you've been praying to God for for years, like you see the results of it.

But here's the beautiful thing, that regardless of that physical miracle, when you choose to put yourself in his presence, you see the miracle of his presence daily. And it changes every aspect of who you are. I see these miracles all the time. And I love it.

But if I wasn't near him, I wouldn't see it.

And if I didn't see it, I'd be stressed out. I'd be frustrated. I'd be superficial. I would be angry at God.

But I'm not because I keep putting myself in that place.

I'm not smart. I'm not that intelligent. In fact, I make a lot of bad decisions. But one thing that God was kind enough to me to let me do was put myself in his presence.

And I'm just sitting here reaching out.

I'm trying to touch the hem of his garment. And I'm getting healed slowly. But surely, sometimes it takes a little Vyvanse to help me out on my ADHD. But the Lord is healing me.

You need to do the same thing.

You need to put yourself in that position. Stretch your arm out. Look. Wait.

Hope.

And move. Verse 22 says this. Jesus turned and saw her. This is Jesus' posture toward you.

Always.

He showed it on the cross. We were hostile. He died on the cross for your forgiveness. It's his posture toward her.

It's his posture toward you.

He turned and he saw her. He said, take heart, daughter. He said, your faith has healed you. And the woman was healed at that moment.

Now, that verse is a difficult verse.

And some people take it in the wrong direction in both ways. One direction they'll take is say, hey, you've got to have enough faith. If you don't have enough faith, then God's not going to heal you. Some people say it.

Some people go so far as to say that's not what that verse means.

Here's what I want to tell you. There's some things in Scripture that are tensions to manage. And they're difficult. There was something about her faith that was distant or different from others' faith.

Or like thereof.

There was something about her faith that like pulled out Jesus' compassion on her. And there was something within his sovereignty that he fully intended to do this the entire time. And I don't know how it works. You can go to other churches.

They'll tell you how it works.

I can't tell you exactly how it works. But what I can tell you is what the Scripture says in multiple versions of this. Your faith has healed you. And when I read this, I get a little frustrated again because I don't have all the details.

In Mark and Luke, it says that when she touched the hem of his garment, it says the power left Jesus when the woman touched him.

It says there was a crazy crowd and it was difficult for people to get to him. And when Jesus touched her and he turned around and said, hey, who touched me? The disciples are like, there's a bunch of people touching you, bro. But he felt the power leave him.

This is all in Mark and Luke.

It says he felt the power leave him. And I wish Matthew had said it, but he didn't. But here's what I see in this. He turned to her, saw her, said, take heart, daughter.

Your faith has healed you.

There's something. It's almost as if your willingness to get close to him draws out the compassionate heart of our creator. It's like he looks at you. He doesn't feel sorry for you.

He doesn't feel pity on you.

He looks at you and he says, oh my gosh. They're trying. Now, he came for us when we weren't trying. But when he sees someone who's genuinely like trying to seek him, where he can be found, he's like, man, if I'm going to do it for those who aren't even thinking about it, what do you think my heart's going to do for someone who's reaching out in faith?

It draws out.

It draws out his compassion. And I don't know exactly how it works, but I know that the Scriptures say this, and I've seen in my own life that when I seek him, I find him. Maybe it's that the miracle isn't that my faith made him do something that he wouldn't have done. Maybe it's that when I seek him and I get close to him, I see something he was always planning to do, but I would have missed it had I not been close to him.

I have no clue how it works, but I know there's something about my faith that draws out the compassionate heart of my creator.

No, you're not forcing his hand. You're not changing his plan, but you being near him and having faith enables you to tap into the infinite power and the capacity of your savior. It's a simple point. Jesus loves when you have faith.

I don't know the levels.

I just know he loves it when you have it. Faith of a mustard seed, faith that can move him out, I have no clue, but he loves it. It's so interesting because I spent years just walking through this stuff. And I wish I knew exactly how it works so I could give you a formula, but I just know this, seek him.

You'll find him.

When you find him, you'll see more miracles. And somehow that faith that enabled you to seek him enables you to see the miraculous and it draws out the compassionate heart of your creator. And I'm going to stop there because I can't go much further. I've studied this for years and I don't understand exactly how it works, but I know when I'm closer, I see more.

And if you get closer, you see more.

What I found is that the more faith I have, the smaller I feel about myself. And I found that the bigger I feel about myself, the less faith that I have. This could be a control issue that I've got. It could be the fact that I'm just consumed in my own thoughts about myself.

Whatever it is, faith in God, it decreases the bigger you get in your own mind.

And it increases the smaller you get. We've got to be okay with maybe a little laying ourselves on the altar, being smaller. Paul says in Philippians, consider yourselves, don't consider yourselves more highly than you ought to. Because when you look at Jesus, it says he humbled himself to the point of death on the cross.

And he was highly exalted.

So maybe, maybe when we think of ourselves less, which is real humility, and think of Christ Jesus more, our faith increases and we see more of God. And I know that there's a reality that God's sovereign over all things, and that I've been redeemed by the grace of God. And not my own works. But he says your faith has made you well.

Could it be that without faith, there's no miracle?

I don't, man, I'm just asking a bunch of questions that I probably should have asked privately and not asked you. But if you don't have the faith, you probably wouldn't have the faith to see it when it happened either. I see things that happen all the time, and then I look at somebody else, and they're like, huh? I must be crazy then.

Because I saw something that you didn't see.

I think the faith enabled it. Anyways, let's jump into verse 23. When Jesus entered the synagogue leader's house and saw the noisy crowd and people playing pipes, he said, go away. If you remember his starting point, you kind of get Jesus' ethos here.

It's like, get out of here, guys.

I'm tired of this stuff. People of little faith. He says, the girl's not dead, but asleep. And they laughed at him.

I think he's trolling them a little bit, to be honest with you.

Like, he's not, he knows, anyways, I think he's trolling them. After the crowd had been put outside, he went in and took the girl by the hand, and she got up. That's it! Mark and Luke again.

Talitha kum.

Little girl, rise. That's what Mark said. Isn't that so cool? It's this whole moment with Jesus and the little girl, and she gets up.

What about the, hey, Jairus, have faith.

He didn't say any of that here. Matthew. It says he grabbed her by the hand, and she got up. And he said, no, don't fear, only believe.

No talitha kum.

No, no little girl, rise. No 12-year-old girl, by the way. She's 12 years old in the other Gospels. We see this.

And if you remember, there was a woman hemorrhaging for how many years?

12. That's so cool! It's almost as if they put it together, and they saw that, and understood that the number 12 was significant in Judaism at the time. And there was something of completion that God was trying to do with the healing in these two moments.

But Matthew, come on, bro.

You're leaving it out. Why didn't you include this? And I don't know if Matthew was having a bad day, too. Maybe he started at a bad spot, and he was just like, I'm not going to tell them about that.

I got two chapters from miracles.

I'm moving on. I got more stuff to talk about. He said, he grabbed her by the hand, and she got up. And I wonder if maybe Matthew was like, but I already said that with the woman.

Your faith has healed you.

That's the real miracle. That's the point. What he says in the other Gospels with Jairus is, hey, don't fear. Only have faith.

And there's this cool moment where he puts everybody out, and he says, little girl, arise.

I think maybe Matthew left that portion out because it had already been articulated in the other Gospels, and because his main point was to say that when you have faith in Jesus, it draws out the compassion of your Creator. And so he says it to this woman, and we see a woman touch the hem of his garment, and she's healed. And what Matthew understands is, if I'm going to include things in my Gospel, I want to include things that have a point to them. He says, your faith has healed you.

And then he gets to the talith, the coom part, little girl, arise part, the dead person who's now raised up, the command to this person to have faith.

And he's like, I already talked about the miracle on the way, and my ultimate destination is the resurrection of the Son of God. I've already got a resurrection in my story. And I'm not saying this is exactly why I did it, but I'm trying to understand Matthew's posture. He's trying to give you what you need.

What do you need to understand?

When you put yourself in the proximity of your Creator, He has the capacity to do things. Not only does He have compassion on you because of your faith, but you being close to Him because you sought Him, you looked, you hoped, you waited, and you moved closer to Him. You stretched out your arm, you touched the hem of His garment, and He turned toward you, and He said, take heart. Your faith has made you well.

Matthew's trying to say to a group of people who didn't know Jesus personally, he's trying to say, yeah, this is a cool story about the girl.

He grabbed her by the hand, lifted her up. But what I need you to understand is His posture toward you, when you trust in Him, is He turns toward you. And He has compassion. And just like this woman, He'll look at you and He says, take heart.

Because your faith and trust in Me has done all you need.

This is why. This is why we try to make our faith so simple. It's complex, but it's simple. When Paul says, confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead.

And when you have that kind of faith in turning toward Him, take heart.

Because when He turns toward you, now He takes you with Him. The Bible says in Ephesians that we've been sealed by God's Spirit into eternity, into a life of conviction by that same Spirit, into a life of power that when we trust God and have faith and seek Him out, He establishes our way. He lights up our path. And He performs miracles daily.

This was known way before Jesus in the Old Testament when it said His mercies are new every morning.

I don't know if you've been considering it this way, but I have learned to consider His mercies miraculous. Because when I default to wake up in depression and He wakes me up in excitement, when I default to one way of life and He wakes me up to a new life in Christ, when He radically shifts my posture toward other people and enables me to put myself on the altar of His praise and then serve His people. That's a miracle because I'm pretty selfish. I think that's why Matthew articulated it the way He did.

He's trained in Greek rhetoric and He understands that I've got to give them a main point and I've got to help them understand that it's faith I'm trying to talk about.

And these are just a couple miracles on the way to the real miracle of His resurrection. So the big idea as you approach your life I want you to understand this that there's something that's coming. The best is truly yet to come but your next miracle it's on the way and it comes when you choose to live by faith. And if you're not living by faith I want you to understand something.

It's not that God hasn't died for you.

He already did it. It's not that God doesn't want to turn toward you. He's probably already turning toward you at this moment but maybe you're not seeing His grace and compassion and His love for you because you're at the precipice of something that could be great but it could also completely derail your life. It is a choice.

Am I going to wait outside of the house for Jesus to come out?

Or am I going to sit over here in frustration and anger because something didn't work out? It's a choice. I was in the depths of dysfunction at least as deep in dysfunction as you can be in eighth grade when I realized that I needed to be humble enough to come toward Jesus and let Him control my life. So wherever you are this close arms crossed or in the depth of emotional dysfunction reach out your hand right now.

Here's how you reach out your hand.

You say something similar. God, I believe that Jesus is your son. I believe He died on the cross and rose from the grave. God, I believe that your compassion can overflow in my life.

I believe you can take me to new heights as I seek you.

I believe in what your son Jesus did. And I commit my life to you. And God, as your power comes out to me, I pray that you would continue to draw me to you.