"As He was telling them these things, suddenly one of the leaders came and knelt down before Him, saying, “My daughter is near death, but come and lay Your hand on her, and she will live.” 19 So Jesus and His disciples got up and followed him.
20 Just then, a woman who had suffered from bleeding for 12 years approached from behind and touched the tassel on His robe, 21 for she said to herself, “If I can just touch His robe, I’ll be made well!”
22 But Jesus turned and saw her. “Have courage, daughter,” He said. “Your faith has made you well.” And the woman was made well from that moment.
23 When Jesus came to the leader’s house, He saw the flute players and a crowd lamenting loudly. 24 “Leave,” He said, “because the girl isn’t dead, but sleeping.” And they started laughing at Him. 25 But when the crowd had been put outside, He went in and took her by the hand, and the girl got up. 26 And this news spread throughout that whole area."
Matthew 9:18-26
Heavenly Father
We thank You for all You've done for us, for that which You are currently working out on our behalf. Thank You for meeting every need of those gathered here today. Father, we pray for those who do not know You, may this be the day they open their heart, that they may come to believe. For those who do know You, may today be the day there's a deepening of commitment. And Father, for those that You are calling to join and unite with Your church, may they be obedient, and be responsive to Your call today.
Lord, bring those that You would have to come to You and touch every life with the encouragement and great hope that is ours, because You have the power over death. Bring us together today, with anticipation that You’re going to speak to each us, open up our hearts, to the things that You desire us to do. Thank You for this beautiful gift of today and all these people You have gathered together here. We give You all the praise! For the glory is Yours alone.
In Jesus Christ’s name, we ask and pray,
Amen
Good Morning Beloved,
Thank you all for joining us today.
I'm so glad you're here!
Today, it is my great honor and privilege, to share with you, what is most likely a very familiar passage of Scripture in the Bible. However, a story that has its beginning in a very unfamiliar passage in the Bible. The story in Matthew chapter 9 verse 20 is the familiar story.
The story in Zechariah 8:23 is the unfamiliar story that is surrounding the story in Matthew 9:18-26
And if it is the Lord’s will today, I want to articulate these two stories, and tie them together for you.
Because the two great passages go together. And together they are much bigger than just the healing a woman who is very ill. Together they reveal to us the identity and means of healing of the sin-sick world 500 years before Christ ever walked the streets of Jerusalem.
A man, a prophet in Israel, named Zechariah. Who was born a slave in Babylon.
A member of the family of High Priests
His family returned to the land of Judah under the leadership of Zerubbabel and Joshua.
You can trace Zechariah’s genealogy, in the book of Nehemiah 12:16
His prophecy plays a significant part in this story of the healing of the woman
we know as the woman with the issue of blood
who touched the hem of Jesus’ garment and was made whole
Matthew 9:20-21 "Just then a woman who had been subject to bleeding for twelve years came up behind him and touched the edge of his cloak. She said to herself, "If I only touch his cloak, I will be healed."
Jesus was walking down the street of Jerusalem.
He was surrounded as he made his way through the crowded street.
It was impossible to get through the crowd without touching other people.
There was one woman who desperately fought her way through the crowd in order to touch Jesus.
As soon as she did,
Jesus knew, "Somebody" had touched me.
It doesn’t say who
It doesn’t give a name
It just says she came up “behind him and touched the edge of his cloak.”
Underline: “behind him and touched the edge of his cloak.”
Jesus turned and saw her He knew somebody had touched Him
The virtue of Jesus had been transferred from Him to her
The healing power of Jesus had been transferred upon her
Jesus knew that somebody got something from Him
Jesus knew that somebody had touched Him and that He had touched someone
The woman was healed at that moment.
Now just hold on to that thought
While we turn over to Zechariah 8:23
If you can’t find Zechariah in your Bible, its between Haggai and Malachi.
If you look down and you are over in the book of Zephaniah instead of Zechariah,
at least you got the right letter in the alphabet. I mean, you didn't end up in the Book of Revelations or something. You are somewhere in the Old Testament anyway. Right?
"This is what the LORD Almighty says: "In those days ten people from all languages and nations will take firm hold of one Jew by the hem of his robe and say, 'Let us go with you because we have heard that God is with you."
Zechariah 8:23
I'd like you to notice the phrase "will take firm hold of one Jew by the hem of his robe."
Underline: “by the hem of his robe.”
This is where we connect the dots so to speak.
Both verses are about touching the hem of a robe or garment.
So, that is what’s going to tie these two verses together
and hopefully bring an important truth to us in this message today.
So we have the action of "touch"
The healing power of touch…
"There is Power in Touch"
There is healing power in the touch
There is power in the touch of Jesus
Touch
Several years ago, it may have been around 2012 or 2013, anyway, there was an interesting article in Psychology Today. In the article, it spoke about the "Language of Touch," and the "Power that Touch" has in the world we live in.
It goes on to say, that babies respond much more quickly to treatment when they have the human touch, in comparison to those who have no contact whatsoever, except that which is medically necessary, they have no human touch. Nor do not respond to treatment as well as those who are rubbed, patted and held.
Even when that touch is through some glove or another garment, still, that touch is essential for nurturing and healing.
Another language of touch, is for example, when a young girl is talking with a young boy, and she is constantly twirling her hair around her finger. Subconsciously that touch is a sign, a signal, it is a message of attraction.
Another example is two people are on a crowded pew
One person bumps the other person beside them with their elbow and hip.
The message is clear; move over, make room, so I can comfortably sit down.
The article goes on to say that touch has a language of its own.
I'd like you to keep that in mind as we examine the meaning and the use of the word touch in our text today.
Touch is a method of communication. Touch is a method of communication.
We don’t always have to verbalize our feelings. Love can be communicated through a touch.
Sometimes when someone is stressed or worried, you can touch someone, through a hug, holding their hand, in such a way that they can feel comfort.
It provides a sense of security, that worry or that anxiety is going to pass, that things are going to be O.K.
We have body language. We talk with our eyes We communicate through our facial expression
thru a stare, a glare or even a glance.
If you knew what your mom was saying when she gave you a certain look. Can I get an Amen?
All she had to do is look at you in a certain way and you just knew you were in trouble or had better stop what you were doing that mom didn't approve of. Mom could touch you with just a certain look in her eyes.
One of the things that concerns me in this present day and age, is as a society, we communicate everything through texts and emails, we don’t get the full impact of meaning behind the words. There is no voice inflection. Things are often misread or misunderstood. Because all meaning and feelings cannot be accurately conveyed through typed words.
I have had some people who think that I am unconcerned or even upset by how short my texts are sometimes. One example, is I used to just type the letter "k," rather than "O.K." Or instead of thank you very much, I would simply type the letter "k." To me it meant, I got it. Thank you. I understand
It is O.K. However, one friend said that I seemed unconcerned, it was interpreted as rude.
So, If I ever type the letter "k," I am not being rude. I am just saying Thank you, I got it. "k."
I have learned that you can misunderstand people when you try to evaluate the heart behind the words. There is something to be said for seeing their facial expressions and hearing their voice,
the inflection of their voice, or feel the touch of their hand. Things that communicates the depth to which they feel what they feel or are saying.
So, I ask for you to keep that in mind as we look at the verse in Zechariah.
In Zechariah’s time, all that was left of the nation of Israel was a small remnant of the past Jews.
After 70 years in Babylon, during the first year of his reign, Cyrus King of Persia released the Israelites to return and to rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem in hope that the Messiah would come.
But when they returned to their homeland they were met by foreign people practicing a mixture of religions. They were met with hostility. They were judged and condemned by the Samaritans.
They were mocked and ridiculed as a people who had lost everything:
Imagine having everything about who you are ripped away from you.
Their home, their city, their self-value, even their identity as a people of God, their Temple, the Ark of the Covenant. The Ark of the Covenant was the essence of the Presence of God.
Now we see a people without the Ark of the Covenant. A people abandoned and isolated and forsaken by their God. A faithless people whose God allowed them to be exiled into forced captivity and servitude.
Some are short term, temporary. While others last for months, years or even through generations in our family history.
Today’s message is about a God, who can take a bruised, wounded, bleeding and broken group of people and restore them back to health and wholeness again.
What are some of the things you are hoping for?
What areas in your life do you want to see change?
What things have you been praying about?
What problems have you been trusting in God to turn around?
Defeat, and discouragement, disaster, and turmoil, storms and trials?
That is not your final answer. That is not the last chapter in your book.
You must keep believing, keep expecting, keep honoring God and God will change your circumstances. And, might I add, you wouldn't be here today if you did not already believe that!
Your faith has brought you here.. Your faith in God, is what caused you to be here in the first place.
You know that Holy Spirit in is this place, Jesus is in this place.
You came here today hoping and expecting to meet Jesus in a song, to see Jesus on a face, to hear Jesus speak to your heart in today's message, to feel Jesus in a prayer, to experience Jesus in worship.
To touch Jesus and to be touched by Jesus. You believe it. You have faith in it. You came here, today to claim it.
Faith is speaking words and taking actions that activate God’s power.
Let the Word of God take root in your spirit. Let the Word of God grow in your heart.
Some years ago I was talking with a man who was having an affair on his spouse.
His wife did not know anything about what he was doing at the time, though she did find out later.
They always find out people! However, he showed me his burner phone, it was a cheap flip phone he used to only contact his mistress.
After talking about the problems with the affair, how he was hiding what he was doing, how it was enabling him to continue to do wrong, I asked him to hand me the burner phone.
I took it, stomped on it and threw it in the garbage can. He looked at me in shock and asked, "What in the world are you doing? Why would you do that?" I told him "to make it more difficult for him to be in touch with his mistress."
Beloved, listen closely, we need to make the sinful things more difficult to access and easier to touch Godly things. The devil may try to talk you out of it. However, it's your responsibility to believe and have faith. Now understand this, then you must act on that faith.
Your struggle with sin has to go. The issue causing your problem has to go. If you're still holding onto the things that are causing the issue, whether hidden in a box in the back of your closet, under your mattress or your locker at work, it's accessible to you. And, its just a matter of time, before you reach out and take hold of the opportunity to go for it.
An argument, a fight, a bad day and before you know, you're grabbing for that thing that causes you to backslide. If pornography is the problem, loose the computer. If its contacting an ex, change your number and delete theirs Whatever it takes to make if more difficult to access the things that take you away from godly behavior.
Why? Because your sickness has to go, your troubles have to go, your sadness must go.
You deserve a new sense of joy, and its coming. But you have to know that God wants it for you.
And you have to remove the things that are blocking it!
God wanted for her a better life than what she had been living. Her condition was so that she could not be with a husband. She could not hold a child or ever hug or touch another person.
She was considered an outcast, she was unclean. She had no one to touch. She spent all her money on doctors without results. She could not go to the temple to pray. She had to cover her head when on the street to hide her identity. But she believed that God wanted her to get healthy and get well.
She heard Jesus was coming to town.
Something inside you today said get up out of bed and see what God has to say.
You don't need "good luck." There's no such thing as "luck!" It's all God!
It's God’s favor shining down and touching your life!
Even though she was weak from losing blood, she moved through the crowd to get to Jesus.
She refused to give up. God works in mysterious ways!
She said, if I can touch Him I know I will be healed.
Beloved, healing is coming. Favor is coming. Blessings are coming. Joy is coming.
Let me tell you God wants good for you.
God doesn’t want us to live stressed out, worried every day, not enjoying the precious gift of life! Spending every minute concerned about whether we are going to have enough for tomorrow.
God doesn’t want you to live from paycheck to paycheck.
God doesn’t want you to wake up sick every morning.
God wants what is best for His children.
"If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good things to those who ask Him!"
Matthew 7:11
Sure, life may have thrown you some curves; so now you don’t see anything good.
This is when you get up and say, "No, I am not going to live discouraged, I refuse to live my life defeated. I am not going to stay focused on what’s wrong, expecting things not to change.
Today is going to be different! I’m going to stir up my faith! Because I know God is on the throne
I know God is bigger than my problems! I am going to reach out and receive His Touch!
Look, you already believe its possible or you wouldn’t be here today.
This woman was filled with faith.
She reached out and barely touched the hem of His robe.
Jesus immediately knew someone had "touched the hem of his robe."
Somebody touched me with such expectancy.
Somebody touched me and drew the miracle power right out of me.
You came here today wanting to get God’s attention. Well, guess what you've got it.
We’re doing that same thing the woman did. We showed up where Jesus is! We believe, if I can just get to Jesus, I can be healed!
Your faith can release the miracle Jesus has in store for you.
This lady’s miracle was released By touching the Hem of His Robe.
Christianity is more than a religion it is your identity. It's who you are!
Notice what Jesus calls the woman who touched him…
"Daughter," identifying her specifically as a descendant of the remnant that Zechariah the prophet was talking about people from all languages and nations will take firm hold of one Jew by the hem of his robe. Zechariah foretold that the Messiah would heal this woman.
When you make a profession of faith, when you are baptized in the water, when you complete confirmation, when you take the identity of a believer, all of these things are part of who you are.
Who your God is.
Today's message, beloved, is a call to strengthen your commitment, to double your efforts. To increase your witness.
Step forward. Step up, and be healed, be saved, be touched by the Savior!
It is time for God's people to rise to the challenge. Lest we forget all the things that were learned from the past and lose all the things that have been worked so hard for by those who have gone before you.
Zechariah preached to the people of Israel, you are going to be set free from your bondage and you will go back to Jerusalem and rebuild the Holy Temple of God and that will usher in a new age of preparation for the coming of the Messiah.
God kept His promises as seen in the life of Christ.
God kept those promises in the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ.
A closer and deeper look of Zechariah's’ preaching tells us God will send Jesus back to return again.
It is the return of Jesus in our lives, and in our future!
Zechariah 14:4 prophesied, "On that day his feet will stand on the Mount of Olives, east of Jerusalem,
and the Mount of Olives will be split in two from east to west, forming a great valley, with half of the Mount moving north and half moving south."
The phase: "That day" is a reference to the Day of the Lord, and the One who stands on the mountain is the Lord Himself. So, yes, this passage prophesies the second coming of Christ in our future.
When you look back on your life, you will see times when God’s promises have come to pass.
Things you thought were impossible turned around. God has brought you out of trouble in the past.
And God is still ready to do great things in your life right now. And let me just tell you something,
God always, always, keeps His promises!
Do you know how I know this to be true? Because Scripture affirms it!
"God is not a man who lies, or a son of man who changes His mind. Does He speak and not act, or promise and not fulfill?"
Numbers 23:19
As Christians, we need to go out to teach people how to be saved and become Spirit-filled believers.
We go out into the community to help those who have lost touch from Jesus.
We are the only hands Jesus has today.
We are the only feet Jesus has today.
When you go from here today, go and "BE THE CHURCH"
Often that hand that reaches out to us will be filthy, unclean, and has obviously been places and used for things that you would not want to touch.
Yet we allow them to touch our hands because that is exactly what Jesus has done for us!
He reached down and touched each and every one of us, even though we are all sinful both by birth and choice. He still touched us! Even though He hates what we have done, Jesus hates sin. He loved us enough to reach out and touch our lives, to call us to Himself.
We all need the healing, forgiveness and salvation that comes only through Jesus Christ. There is Power in His Touch. When Christ heals somebody physically, there is a deep spiritual announcement like with this woman who touched the hem of His garment. Her condition in the gospel represents the inability to change your physical condition,and the inability to change your spiritual condition on your own. This woman was one of the ten fulfilling the prophecy and imagery of Zechariah.
A "daughter," as identified by Jesus. A descendant of one of the ten lost tribes of Israel who had returned to Judah and to fulfill the prophecy of Zechariah. "In those days ten people from all languages and nations will take firm hold of one Jew by the hem of his robe” This Woman is a type of imagery of the House of Israel. The physicians are the Pharisees, the 12 years of her suffering this illness in Hebrew numbers signifies completion or perfection, the blood is a sign of uncleanliness as a whole for the house of Israel. The Lord turns to the woman as she finally knew this was her best hope, As the Jews do when they returned backed to their homeland and Judah and the Mount of Olives.
From The Mount of Olives from Zechariah's’ day to the Mount of Olives in Jesus day to the Mount of Olives in the Return of Christ, all come together as we proceed forward through the age and meet Christ, all are healed and saved "By Power of His Touch."
The enemy knows your soul, he knows your wounds and brokenness as he tries to close in around you for the kill. He wants to take your life away, he wants to destroy your blessed assurance, he wants to challenge your safety and security, he wants to wreck your future!
He wants to keep you bound in the chains of wickedness.
The woman in our text today, acted on her faith.
This woman somehow had heard what Jesus had done for others and came to believe that what He had done for others He could do for her. Christ prophecies fulfilled and promises of deliverance and salvation kept.
In Closing..
Today, right now, I invite you to come to Jesus, for whatever your need today.
I want to encourage you to come to Jesus.
Do you need to be saved? Come to Him!
Do you have concerns in your family? Come to Him!
Whatever your need! Come to Him!
But you have to rise up and reach for Him by faith!
Faith is where your limited self meets the limitless God!
We have to stop thinking the God only worked miracles in the past.
Beloved, this woman could have stayed home when she heard that Jesus was in town.
She had real reasons to be depressed and discouraged.
She had reasons to lose hope.
But she didn't! She grabbed hold of faith instead!
She touched the hem of His robe!
In spite of what many in today's culture have come to think, being saved is not old fashioned!
Kneeling at an altar is not out of date.
Because that is our prophecy being fulfilled!
Its how our identity in Christ, is created.
That is how we all have become daughters and sons of God.
Call out to Jesus, ask Him to touch you. Strengthen you. Heal you. Bless you.
I dare you to ask for the power of His touch!
But you have to call upon Jesus!
You have to reach out and be healed and forgiven by the hem of His garment.
How? By faith!
And now may the Lord bless you and keep you;
the Lord make His face shine upon you,
And be gracious to you;
The Lord lift up His countenance upon you,
And give you peace.
Now and forever, in Jesus' name
Amen
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