For anyone that is facing a bad report, you can get through this. You just need to take another look at what you have.
I have personal issues. I have a personal God.
I have personal fears. I have personal phobias.
I have a personal God. I love the
phrase we used in the Baptist church:
to make Jesus Christ your personal Lord
and Savior. It’s something we used in the
Baptist church to mean he is Lord and
Savior whether you say he is or not,
but when it gets personal to you, that means
you go to him to save you, not a pill bottle.
That means you go to him to save you,
not a plastic card where you spend money you don’t
have to buy stuff you don’t need to impress people
who aren’t even paying attention to you because
they’re doing the same thing. You go to Jesus to
save you. You go to Jesus to deliver you. You
go to Jesus to speak to you, not potato chips.
You go to Jesus to speak to you, not Pornhub.
You go to Jesus… I thought y’all wanted it real.
This is a personal word that Jesus spoke to
Jairus. Go back to verse 35. While he was still
speaking, some people from Jairus’
house came to him and gave him
a bad report. Don’t shy away from relating to
this story just because you cannot sympathize
with the specific situation. The principles
that are in this passage of Scripture
apply to any situation in your life that
requires faith where fear is present.
I used to shy away from these heavy
passages because I thought, “Man,
I’ve never lost a child.” This passage isn’t so
much about losing a child as it is keeping faith.
Keeping faith means sometimes believing
God in the face of a bad report.
So, this word, first of all, is about
somebody who has received a report this
week in your life that has caused you to fear,
dread, or to fall into a place of despondency.
As Jesus is speaking, some people
come from Jairus’ house and say,
“It got worse. The whole time you’ve
been standing here at the feet of Jesus…”
I didn’t read this part, because I can’t read the
whole Bible to you every time we get together.
I just have to choose a frame and start there.
I would love to, actually. I would love to talk
to you about what was in Mark 3, Mark 4, Mark 7,
Mark 8, Mark 9, Mark 10, because it’s all good,
but just for this frame today, I didn’t tell
you that Jairus fell at the feet of Jesus.
That means he had to come down from his high
position as a synagogue leader and put himself
in a low place at the feet of a rabbi
who wasn’t even a part of his religion.
Church didn’t exist yet. Jairus was Jewish,
leading a synagogue, and he came to Jesus
who was outside the system of what
he even knew to be true religion.
Here’s what I learned about
desperate situations in your life.
Desperate situations will cause you to
do things differently than you did them
when you thought you had all of the answers and
everything you needed and had it all figured out.
Now the leader is at the feet of a teacher, and
he hopes he can do something for his daughter.
Every dad of a daughter, stand up.
Wouldn’t you do the same thing?
Wouldn’t you fall at his feet? Your daughter
is dying. Wouldn’t you fall at his feet?
Wouldn’t you do the same thing for your
daughter? Now, I have three kids, two boys,
one girl. I’m not sure I would do it for
them, the boys, but for Abbey… I’m just
kidding. I’d do it for any of my kids. Holly
and I were talking about this the other night.
This is the conversation I want to bring
you in on. This is just our conversation.
We were talking about how, really, in the
end, you have to give your kids to God.
You really do. I mean, you can put them on a sleep
schedule when they’re 2, but when they’re 32…
When they’re transitioning through life…
There’s a point where God calls you to
participate in parenting your children.
But there’s a fine line between participating
and manipulating. This is not a parenting sermon,
but that’s what the text is talking about. So,
as I relate to this text, I relate as a dad who
would do anything… I’m almost making my kids soft,
because I would almost do anything so they
never have to go through anything hard.
I know I shouldn’t do that, but I’m almost
like Dwight Schrute in The Office when he
was going ahead of Michael and making sure he
didn’t starve. Remember when Michael wanted to
go out in the woods? Y’all don’t watch
The Office? I’m going to give an altar
call for everybody who hasn’t seen The
Office at least twice, the whole series.
I’ll admit that I coddle them because I
care about them, and you would do the same.
It looks strange to see somebody down in the
dirt, like Jairus was when he came to Jesus,
until you have felt that kind
of desperation in yourself.
We were talking how… You have a baby. Right?
Like, I didn’t personally. I participated,
and then I thought, “Oh, that’s
wonderful. They were born healthy.”
And that is the end of worrying about your kids.
We had the baby.
“Okay, God. We’re good now. We don’t need you
anymore. From here on out, this kid is going
to go in the way they should go, do the things
they should do, say the things they should say.
It’s all good, God. Thank you for
bringing this baby into the world.
We had the baby, and now we have the baby, and
now that we have it, we’re good, God.” Right?
It’s ridiculous…as ridiculous as it is
for you to think that trusting Jesus
is something you do one time
when you give him your life.
Even the language… Watch the language. To
place your faith in Jesus is not an event;
it is a practice, just like raising your kids.
“Should I step in here? Should I step back there?
Should I let them bust their butt on this one so
they don’t end up busting their whole head wide
open on the next one? What do I do right here?”
Following Jesus is exactly the same
way, because you will find yourself
in moments of weakness and moments of strength, in
moments of knowledge and in moments of ignorance,
in moments of highs and moments of lows. You
will find yourself every step of this journey
like Jairus, saying, “In one area of my life I’m
a leader. In one area of my life I’m the top man
on the food chain. In one area of my life I have
the answers. I am Jairus, the synagogue leader.”
But on the day we meet Jairus, he is not standing
at the front of the synagogue issuing the
sacraments for the people or checking the roll
at the back of the room. He is a desperate dad
at the feet of Jesus. Jesus, the teacher. That’s
what the men who came from his house said to him.
He comes. He says, “My daughter is dying. Will
you come with me to my house and heal her?”
Jesus is like, “Yeah, I’ll go. Sure.
Because you came here and asked me…”
I love Jairus, because he didn’t just
assume that it was all God’s job. Do
you understand? He didn’t just assume that if God
wants it to happen, it will just naturally happen.
He didn’t just assume God is like an automatic
faucet where you put your hands under it and wait.
Some of you all are going to be waiting a
long time under a faucet that God has given
you the faith to turn on by your actions,
because faith without works is dead.
So he did something. He went to Jesus. He did
something risky. He did something dangerous.
He had to cut through a crowd to do it,
and it worked…until the interruption.
Now I want to speak to you about the
interruption…the interruption you’re going
through in your life, the interruption
that happened to you from the outside,
the interruption that happened to
you that kept you from your goal.
We all had goals, and we all had dreams, and we
all had things in between the idea and the dream.
Call them roadblocks. Just call it a roadblock.
In this particular instance, the crowd is pressing
around Jesus so tightly… One gospel writer (it’s
not in Mark) says it almost crushed the crowd. In
Mark’s gospel, the crowd is never seen as a good
thing. Like, when we go out to Elevation Nights,
I want the crowds to be big so we can have church.
When Mark mentions the crowd, a lot of times
that’s something that’s standing in the way of
what God really wants to do. So, a lot of what
we celebrate in life is a lot of what God tries
to strip away to perform his agenda. You know
how you think it would be so cool to be famous?
Most famous people wish they could be anonymous
even for five minutes. Trust me. I’ve talked
to them. They talk about it. “The thing I went
after actually proved to be a great distraction.”
In this passage, there is a woman, and if God
so leads, I’m going to preach about her on tour
over the next two weeks,
because she comes to Jesus
through the crowd and gets a miracle for her
situation, which has been going on for 12 years,
as long as the little girl has been alive.
As she is being healed by touching the dirty
hem of Jesus’ garment in the Palestinian
streets, Jairus’ daughter is home dying.
So her healing, from a human perspective,
cost Jairus’ daughter her life.
Now this is the part of the teaching
that I want to become flesh in your life,
because this is where we find ourselves in
moments of interruption, in moments of disruption,
in moments where something we couldn’t control
affected something we were moving toward.
The people came from Jairus’ house. While Jesus
was still speaking (I know I’ve only dealt with
one verse, but it’s a good one…verse 35), some
people came from the house of Jairus, the leader,
who was at the feet of Jesus, the one with
a lot of prestige in the community who had
a problem at home that all the prestige
in the world couldn’t buy him out of.
Some stuff, it doesn’t matter how much
of that you have that people celebrate.
Something could happen in your life right now
that would make everything else seem worthless
in comparison. I often do an exercise
where it’s like a reverse gratitude,
where I start thinking about everything I don’t
have, everything I want, everything I could do,
everything I should do, and the Lord will
slow me down. Here’s a question he gave
me. If it helps you this week, good. I hope
it helps you this week. It really helps me.
The Lord will bring to my mind all of the people
I love the most. For me, I have a wife, and
I have children, and I have a mom who’s
living, and other people I love too,
in case they watch this. You come into the
picture as well. Then I put them in my mind.
You know, you feel sometimes all of life
is just a focus around what you need next.
All of life is just a focus on going
to the next level, hustle and grind.
All of life can feel that way. So, what I’ll do
often… I’ll put all of those people in my mind,
and then I’ll ask myself the question,
“If you lost them… If you could never, ever sing
Hamilton with Abbey again, if you could never,
ever again throw that ball across the room with
Graham…” He and I play fetch like he is the dog.
“If you could never bench-press with Elijah again,
if you could never see him squat 225
for reps again (like he did this week),
if you could never walk around with Holly and yell
at the cars that are driving too fast and say,
‘Slow down. What’s wrong with you? We live
here…’ If you could never have it again,
what would you give to have it
back?” I’ll say, “Everything.”
Then the Holy Spirit will say, “So what
do you already have?” “Everything.”
Sometimes I think we need a perspective like
Mark, chapter 5, where we realize somebody as
important as Jairus, with as much to do, is losing
his little daughter and nothing else matters.
We lift our hands not only in moments of loss
but even in moments where we are stressed
about stuff that isn’t as significant
as the Devil wants us to think it is,
stuff that doesn’t matter as much. You know
your dirty countertops do not matter as much
as your OCD brain makes them matter to you in the
moments where you are screaming around the house.
Sometimes I just have to stop and go,
“Thank you, Lord. Thank you (if you can get here)
for these messy countertops that these annoying
kids who I would do anything for messed up.”
“Oh, what if I don’t have kids, Pastor Steven?
What if I want kids? What if I’m in a situation
where I’m not married and I want to be married?”
I guarantee you there is something in your
life right now that you are taking for granted
that if you lost it, you would do anything
and everything to have it back. So, what
do you already have? Everything. What do
you already have if you have salvation?
If you know that neither height nor depth nor
anything else in all creation shall be able to
separate you from the love of God
in Christ Jesus, what do you have?
I have it all. If I have Jesus, I have
it all! If I have his blood covering me
and washing the shame off my life and
the filth off my faith, I have it all…not
all I want, but all I need! The Lord is my
shepherd, and I shall not want. I have it all.
High-five five people and
tell them, “I’ve got it all.
I have more than it looks like on the outside.”
I’m grateful. I’m glad to be alive.
I’m glad to be in that number.
I’m glad! He holds me up!
I’m sitting next to something right now that,
if I lost it, I’d do anything to get it back.
Don’t wait for God to take it
away to give him praise for it.