Have you ever thought to yourself – “Well, things are a bit of a mess. I’ve made a hash of this or that and before I go to God with this, I’d better sort it out”? We all do that sometimes. But it turns out that God’s having a party – and it’s come as you are.

The Faces we Wear

God promise is that when we place our faith in Jesus Christ, that He will give us an abundant life, abundant blessing; an eternal life, a life that we can’t even begin to imagine. Do you ever look at that sometimes and think, “It’s just too good to be true?” Yet some people seem to live with an amazing confidence in the blessing of God and others don’t, and the difference, I think, is that sometimes we don’t take God at His Word. That’s why this week we are starting a brand new, four part series, called exactly that, “Taking God at His Word.”

We can see our circumstances, we can see the physical things around us but with our eyes we can’t see the spiritual dimension; we can’t see the ‘God’ dimension and quite often, we look at our physical circumstances and say, “Well, God couldn’t possibly take my life and my circumstances and my failures and bless me in the middle of that.” But God means to do exactly that; His Word is full of promises that He wants to bless us – He wants to bless you, He wants to bless me. So today we are going to begin by looking at some of those promises, in particular the promises He makes about the relationship between Him and us.

Relationships are a funny and complex thing. How well we know one another influences how much of ourselves we expose to one another. Someone that we don’t know very well, someone that we have a shallow relationship with, we’re not going to talk to them about the deepest, most meaningful things in our lives. And someone that we do know really well and don’t like, who hurts us, well, we are going to be guarded with them. Hopefully a relationship between a husband and wife is really open and frank but even there, there can be barriers.

We all have different masks or faces for different occasions. I know I do – a professional face that I put on and a personal the face. The face that we put on in a passing relationship verses one that we wear in a permanent relationship. And even though I tend to be a very open and forthright and direct person, still, we all do it, don’t we? We have different faces for different people, different faces for different situations. We guard who we are depending on the person we are having the relationship with.

Those different faces that we wear are, in effect, different levels of permission and openness for different situations or people and it’s a deeply ingrained pattern of behaviour. So, what face do you and I wear when we come before God? Is it a face that says, “Well, God, I’m just not good enough for you, so I’d better protect myself from your glory and your goodness”? Is it a face that says “God’s promises, they sound too good, well maybe they’re for that person, or that person, but they’re not for me”? Is it a face that says, “I’d better sort these things out in my life before I go to God”? What face do you and I wear when we come before God? It’s an important question – how do I approach God? Because how can we enter into God’s blessing if we don’t even know how to enter into God’s presence?

We are going to go to a passage in the Book of Hebrews. If you have a Bible, grab it and open it up at Hebrews, Chapter 4. It’s a strange little book – it’s less of a letter to a specific group and more of a general tract. “To the Hebrews” was probably added later on. We don’t know who wrote it, although, judging from its style, it wasn’t any of the other authors of the New Testament. And the basic thrust of the Book of Hebrews is to contrast the old covenant, the old promise, under the Jewish Mosaic law, with the new covenant, the new promise of God of grace and forgiveness through faith in Jesus Christ. And it shows how much this new promise is so much better than the old promise. Our passage does that.

Let’s have a look at it – we’re going to read it. Hebrews, Chapter 4, verses 14 to 16. It says this:

Since then we have a great High Priest who passed through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast to our confession because we don’t have a High Priest who’s unable to sympathise with our weaknesses, but we have one who in every respect has been tested as we are, yet was without sin. Let us therefore, approach the throne of grace with boldness so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.

It centers on the fact that Jesus being our High Priest understands our situation because He has walked in our shoes. This passage comes in the context of God’s rest. God plans to bless us by giving us rest, by giving us peace, by giving us joy, by setting us free from all the things in the world that would tear away at us – emotionally and spiritually. And He says, “Look, Jesus is your High Priest and it’s your High priest that brings you rest.”

Look at verse 10.

For those who enter God’s rest, also cease from their labours as God did from His.

The point is, that one of God’s promises is to give us rest and this picture of the High Priest goes right back to the Old Testament, Leviticus Chapter 16. If you have a Bible, flick back and have a look at Leviticus Chapter 16, the first five verses, which we won’t read right now, talk about the way in which sins were forgiven on the day of atonement and the priest went into the Holy of Holies of the temple and gave blood sacrifices over the alter. But look specifically at verse 17.

No one shall be in the tent of the meeting from the time that the High Priest enters to make atonement in the sanctuary until he comes out and has made atonement for himself and for his house and for the assembly of Israel.

No one else can be in the tabernacle when atonement was being made for Israel. Then over the page to verses 29 and 30.

You shall deny yourselves on that day, you shall do no work; neither the citizen nor the alien who resides among you. From this day atonement shall be made for you, to cleanse you from your sins. It is a Sabbath day of complete rest to you.

So God’s plan in making atonement for our sins, in opening the door to a relationship with Him, is complete rest for us. Jesus was the High Priest, Jesus was the mercy seat, Jesus was the lamb whose blood was sprinkled in the sanctuary. That’s the old covenant. That was then, now we are going to have look at the new covenant – the covenant, the promise, the plan that God has for us which is so much better than that.

God’s Party

We are looking at God’s promises. Sometimes we struggle to take God at His Word and God has a promise of relationship and rest and peace for us. We’re specifically looking at what He says in Hebrews Chapter 4 verses 14 to 16 which talks about Jesus being our High Priest.

Under the new covenant, Jesus is the one, the great High Priest who not only went into the sanctuary to make atonement for our sins so that we can be forgiven, to pay for our sins. But He also passed into the heavens, and He also walked on this earth and He relates to us and understands that, He’s able, look at verse 15, He’s able to sympathise with our weaknesses. Not just our sin, but the realities of life here on earth. Jesus, you may get upset with me for saying this, but listen, Jesus went to the toilet, He became tired and frustrated, He felt crowded in, He knew the pressures of a busy schedule, He knew the deep pain of sacrifice – our High Priest, the one who was there when we weren’t, so that our sins could be forgiven.

Our High Priest isn’t some ecclesiastical elitist, He’s a pauper, He’s one of us, someone who walked in our shoes, He knows our frame, He remembers that we are dust. Not just because He’s God, but because He walked as one of us. “Let us therefore,” says Hebrews, “approach the throne of grace with boldness, so that we may receive the mercy and find the grace to help in time of need.” Therefore, why? Because Jesus wasn’t just the High Priest, Jesus was a pauper; Jesus was an ordinary person just like you and me, with all the pressures, all the temptations, all the hassles of life. Isn’t that exciting, isn’t that wonderful?

A few years ago I had occasion to visit the Head of State of Australia. In Australia he is called the Governor General, his name was Sir William Dean, at the time and this place, Government House, where he lives, is steeped in history. We drove up the driveway – the driveway that kings and queens and presidents and prime ministers have come and gone on, and the place was full of the trappings of power.

You know, I played to that – I had a crisply ironed shirt on and I drove up the driveway in a dark coloured car that I had and there was a big bird plop on the front and I thought, “I wished I’d washed my car, I hope I look acceptable, am I good enough?” – but when I met the man, Sir William Dean, the Governor General of this country, what I discovered was this kind, gentle man who was one of us. He was disarming in his humility and his kindness. He wasn’t affected by his position or his status. He showed me around the art collection in Government House and his office and his wife’s office and he set me at ease – we had a cup of tea, he was just a wonderful human being.

You expect someone in a position of power like that, to put themselves above us, in a sense. But he didn’t do that at all, and in a sense, that’s what Jesus is like. In a sense, He is God; He is the Son of God, yet He became one of us. He walked on this earth, He sacrificed His life for us and that’s why we can approach the throne of grace with boldness. That’s why we don’t have to make sure our car is washed, we don’t have to put on our Sunday best, we don’t have to put on a “face” when we come before that throne of grace, because God is having a party and it’s “come as you are”. That is a wonderful message.

Your car is dirty, things aren’t quite right, you feel inadequate? Take God at His Word. “Let us therefore, approach the throne of grace with boldness” Why? Not because we’re fantastic, not because our car’s clean and our shirts are ironed and we’re perfect? No! Because we have in Jesus a High Priest, who in every way has experienced life the way we do. He understands; He can sympathise with our reality and because of that, it says, “Approach the throne of grace,” with what? – With fear, with uncertainty, with timidity? No! Approach the throne of grace with boldness. Come on! You take God at His Word. Would you come with me before the throne of grace putting your faith, not in yourself but in what Jesus did for us on the cross and take God at His Word?

Now the throne of grace is God’s place, just like Government House was the Governor General’s place. The throne of grace is God’s place, it’s about God’s sovereignty and power and awesomeness. Government House is to me what the temple was to the Hebrews – the all powerful, all knowing God, who transcends all things, but is a God of grace. What an incredible juxtaposition of images. A throne which talks about power, of grace; not a throne of power; not a throne of judgement; not a throne of superiority. God is all those things but He calls His throne, the throne of grace.

But what do we do? We focus on the throne, we want to put on our Sunday best, we want to sort ourselves out before we come to that place. Come on! How often do we have problems and think, “We have to sort them out before we go to God. We get to the driveway of that castle and we want to rush off – we want to wash the car, we want to iron our shirt.” There’s a beautiful picture in Luke 15 of the Prodigal Son, the son that deserted his father, spent all his money getting drunk and on prostitutes and he comes back feeling unworthy, saying, “Well, I’ll ask dad if I can become a servant and dad runs out – dad was already waiting on the road, looking for him and he runs out.”

Let’s have a look, reading verse 20 of Luke 15, which is where the story of the Prodigal Son is.

So the son set off and went to his father but while the son was still far off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion and ran out and put his arms around him.

That’s what the throne of grace looks like. The throne of grace is a mobile throne of grace. The throne of grace, when we take the smallest step towards God, comes running toward us, because Jesus understands. We need to stop looking at the castle and focus on the King, who became a pauper for us. We need to forget the trappings and look at God. We didn’t receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but a spirit of adoption so that we can cry, “Abba Father, Dad.”

When ever we think of that throne, the throne of grace, let us think of that waiting Father, when we take the smallest step towards Him, just as we are, He races out to greet us. He throws His arm around us; He doesn’t condemn us. We are His children, not His slaves. Stop looking at the castle, focus on the King. So how should we approach the throne of grace?

The Mobile Throne

So how should we approach the throne of grace? What does your translation say? Mine says, “with boldness” and the Greek word that sits behind our English translation – it comes from Greek philosophy – it means “public”. This is presupposition of democracy – it means the right to say anything, a frankness and a candor. That same word is used again in Mark’s Gospel, Chapter 8 and verse 32, telling of the death and resurrection of Jesus. It says this:

Jesus said this quite openly and Peter took Him aside and began to rebuke Him.

Now that word “openly” is the same word as is used for “boldness” here in this passage in Hebrews. In other words it means “just as we are” – no faces, no masks, no fear, no pretending, no trying to dress ourselves up and get our clothes ironed and our car washed. No! God wants us to be frank and open, to tell it the way it is.

There’s a story in Mark’s Gospel, Chapter 9 around verse 14 that tells about Jesus healing a young boy. Jesus has been just up on the Transfiguration Mount and He comes down and there’s this young boy with demons and His disciples have been trying to cast out the demons and they can’t and so the young boy’s father pleads with Jesus and he says, “If you are able, have pity on us and help us,” and Jesus says, “What do you mean if you are able? All things can be done for the one who believes.” And immediately the father of the child cried out, “I believe, help my unbelief.” There’s this big crowd there and here’s this man who said, “I believe to a point, I can’t believe a hundred percent. I can just believe as much as I believe and as much as I believe, I believe in you.” And the boy was healed, the demons were cast out. Now that father didn’t get a miracle because he had perfect faith.

I don’t have perfect faith. My faith is much stronger and much bigger than it was five years ago, but it’s not perfect. God doesn’t want perfect faith from us, God just wants us to take the faith that we have and place it in Him. Even faith is a gift from God. That father got a miracle because he was honest, he was direct and this son, who from birth was like this, was set free. Have you got a circumstance in your life that you think, “Well God can’t possibly do anything with this because I have been like this for so long and besides I don’t have the sort of faith that they’re talking about?”

Well here’s a story, you don’t need perfect faith. You just take the little bit of faith that we have and place it in Jesus and Jesus can and will do the most amazing things in our life because the effect of going before that throne of grace is to obtain mercy and grace in the time that we need it.

That mercy is the outworking of how God sympathises with us because we don’t have a High Priest who’s unable to sympathise with our weaknesses, but we have one who, in every respect has been tested as we are, yet was without sin. “Therefore let us approach the throne of grace with boldness so that we may receive what? – The outworking of God’s understanding, the outworking of His love and His sympathy, so that we may receive mercy and find grace, to help in time of need. That grace is free; that grace doesn’t depend on our goodness and our perfection, it’s there because we believe in Jesus. Come on! Will we take God at His Word? And to get help is the sense of help running towards us. It’s that sense of the waiting father, right when we need it; right at the perfect time.

Have you ever noticed how perfect God’s timing always is? Just when we need something, God is there to help. Now this passage is saying you can trust in that, you can believe in that. If your faith is in Jesus, you can come before this throne of grace with boldness and just believe that God will help you.

When you need stuff, when you need help, when there’s something that you can’t get through, come boldly before the throne of grace. Don’t worry about the bird plop on the front of your car, don’t worry about whether your clothes are ironed, don’t worry about what we look like or how we’ve behaved or how big our faith is – that’s not the point. The point is that we have a Saviour who can sympathise with us and calls us to come boldly before His throne of grace.

In Jesus we have it all – King, High Priest, sacrifice, place of forgiveness – He’s one of us, and because of who Jesus is, we can approach the throne of grace with openness, with a boldness, leaving the mask at the front door and just talking to Him the way it is. Focusing on the King and not the castle – on His empathy and understanding because of who Jesus is. Remember He is Abba, He is our Father, the waiting Father who will run to our aid. That throne of grace is mobile, that throne of grace is coming towards us.

And some people think, “Oh I’m afraid to ask God for this, I’m afraid to ask God for that.” Maybe we have had anger or sin or failure or low self-esteem – will we let God help us with a special, well-timed, perfect touch of grace? Come on, will we take God at His Word and come boldly before the throne of grace. Not because of who we are, but because of who Jesus is and because in Christ, God understands and sympathises and wants to pour out His mercy and His grace on you and me. Come on! Will we take God at His Word?

Sometimes, to be honest, life can feel really dry. You look out across the landscape of your life and all you can see is dry bones. You know there’s more out there, but right now you just can’t see how it’ll ever feel “alive”.

Valley of Dry Bones

Have you ever noticed that some people seem to go on with God in a really powerful and exciting way and other people who say, “well I’m a Christian”; I don’t know, they tend to be, if I can use the term “puced”, as you know, some people just don’t seem to be living out the joy and the power and the victory that a Christian life should represent. I wonder why that is?

Well … Jesus called us to go and make disciples; He called us to be disciples, not just believers. I think there is a distinction; a difference. A disciple, well, there’s something resolute, there’s something firm in their direction, they have a sense of where God is taking them and they’re radical believers with their lives, in who Jesus is and what Jesus says. So they “hear” the Word of God but they also “do” the Word of God. Someone who’s a believer and yet not a disciple, well, that person can believe; that person can live the story of Christ intermittently, but there is a sense of floating, there’s a sense of they’re not really deeply committed to be followers of Jesus Christ.

There’s a wishy-washiness about just being a believer and not a disciple; being just a believer is like hearing but not doing and as I said, the Lord calls us to be His disciples. The Lord calls us to go on in strength and power and victory, to live an abundant and exciting and amazing life. I really get excited when I think about what God has called us to. Now I’m not saying that somehow, a disciple has it all together, but they’re on the path, they are committed to the journey with the Lord, wherever He wants to take them. A believer has a sort of an intellectual ascent to the Word of God but they are so often controlled by feelings and circumstances and we know that feelings are fickle; we know that circumstances blow an ill-wind today and a good wind tomorrow. We can’t predict circumstances – we can’t rely entirely on our feelings.

Jesus is about making disciples and not believers. That is why we are going through a series of teaching at the moment that I’ve called, “Taking God at His Word,” because it seems to me that someone who is committed to Christ, committed to walking the walk with Jesus, is someone who takes God at His Word. God has some amazing promises in His Word, the Bible.

Last week we looked at the promise that He will take us just as we are. He will take us with all our weaknesses and frailties and even despite that we can come boldly before His throne of grace. If you have a Bible, let’s go quickly back there because it’s an awesome Scripture; in Hebrews chapter 4, verses 15 and 16, where it says this.

We don’t have a High Priest who’s unable to sympathise with our weaknesses, but we have one, who in every respect has been tested as we are, yet was without sin. Let us therefore, approach the throne of grace with boldness so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need. In other words, because Jesus knows what it is like; because He has walked in our shoes on this earth as a man, because of that He can sympathise with our circumstances and because of that, we should come boldly before the throne of grace.

In other words God’s having a party and it‘s come as you are. We don’t have to get all dressed up; we don’t have to get our lives sorted out to come before God. That’s what happens when we have a relationship with Him, through Jesus Christ.

Today we are going to get on with the next message, which is called, “Can these bones live?” Have you ever looked across at your life and thought, “My life is so dry, it shouldn’t be like this, but as I survey the landscape of my life, it’s like a valley of dry bones? It’s like – can it ever get any better, can I ever have a real sense of vibrant abundant life that I know my relationship with Jesus should bring me?” We all get to that point at sometime. We all get to that stage where we think – my life is just so dry. How’s that going to change? Well, it’s time to take God at His Word.

If you have a Bible, grab it and flip it open to Ezekiel chapter 37. Ezekiel is one of the books of the Old Testament and it comes just after Isaiah, Jeremiah and then the Book of Ezekiel. We are going to chapter 37 and we pick up the story of Israel here, when they have been in exile in Babylon for almost seventy years. This is about the third part of the Book of Ezekiel. The first couple of parts are oracles of judgement against Judah and all the other nations surrounding them but this passage that we’re about to look at, at the beginning of Ezekiel chapter 37, is really early on in the third part and the third part of the book is the book of hope. It’s about the restoration of Israel because as I said, at this point, Israel has been in exile in Babylon for almost seventy years.

God made them a promise; God promised them when He brought them up out of Egypt – remember they spent almost four centuries in slavery in Egypt, after Joseph, the son of Jacob, the son of Isaac, the son of Abraham. Joseph was a Jew who became Prime Minister of Egypt and so all the tribes of Israel thrived in Egypt and became so populous they were enslaved by Pharaoh and there they lived until they cried out and God heard their cry and sent Moses to bring them out of Egypt. But they lived four hundred years in Egypt and then went through the exodus of forty years through the desert and finally past into the Promised Land – the land of milk and honey, but they didn’t stick with what God called them to do – they didn’t obey God and God’s promise was, “I’ll bless you in your land if you obey me but if you don’t, you’ll lose your land.”

And sure enough, Babylon rose up against them and in 586/587BC, the Babylonian empire over-ran Jerusalem; burnt it, destroyed it, killed a lot of people and took the rest of them into slavery in exile in Babylon. And so these people were thinking, “Woe, what about God’s promises? The temple’s been destroyed – that’s where God lives. Now we’re exiled and Jerusalem is raised to the ground, what about God’s promises?”

So there’s a sense of hopelessness and despair after generations. Living again, in exile in another country, in Babylon and this is what God says into that situation. It’s got powerful implications for us today, but let’s just see what happens. Ezekiel was taken by God – have a listen. Chapter 37 beginning verses 1 and 2. Ezekiel says this:

The hand of the Lord came upon me and He brought me out by the Spirit of the Lord and set me down in the middle of a valley – it was full of bones. He led me all around them; there were very many lying in the valley and they were very dry.

And here’s this valley full of dry, dead bones. Ezekiel was a priest and he knew the importance of burial. I mean these bones weren’t buried and the reason it happen is they had a treaty with God and they disobeyed God and so the armies of Israel were killed and bodies were left to wild animals and it was God’s punishment. You can read about it – we won’t go there now but in Deuteronomy chapter 28, verses 25 and 26, it explicitly predicts that if Israel doesn’t obey God this will happen – their armies will be destroyed. We find out later in this passage, in verse 11, that these are the bones of the House of Israel.

But what about your house? What about your dry bones? What about the relationships and the sin and the wallowing and the drifting that we sometimes experience in our Christian walk? Sometimes we don’t even know why it is. The thing that God does here is He shows Ezekiel the dry bones, He walks him around. He says, “Get a grip on reality.” Well maybe He’s talking to us today – “Get a grip on reality! What are the dry bones in our lives; the things that are coming to ruin our walk and our relationship with God and the wonderful life that God has planned for us; the dead stuff? What are the dry bones? We are going to look at what God does with the dry bones next.

Life in His Word

Ok, so we’re living life and we feel that it’s like this valley of dry bones that Ezekiel is talking about here. Well, what does God do with those dry bones? Let’s pick it up in verse 3 of chapter 37. God says to Ezekiel:

“Mortal, can these bones live?” I answered, “Lord God, you know.” Then He said to me, “Prophesy to these bones and say to them, “Oh, dry bones, hear the Word of the Lord. Thus says the Lord God to these bones, “I will cause breath to enter you and you shall live, I will lay sinews on you and will cause flesh to come upon you and cover you with skin and put breath in you and you shall live and you shall know that I am the Lord you God.”

So this is the first recorded tennis match in the Bible. God serves up and says to Ezekiel, “Can these bones live,” and Ezekiel returns the ball across the net and says, “Well, God, it’s really up to you.” I mean, they’re dead, they’re dry, it’s devastated, it’s hopeless, they’re crunching around together,” God and Ezekiel in this death valley and the truth is that it looks impossible to Ezekiel, but he daren’t say that.

Well, let’s come back to our valley of dry bones; the broken relationships, the persistent sin, the dryness, the drudgery and God asks you or God asks me, “Can these bones live?” How do we answer that? I think we return that to God and say, “Lord, Lord you know.” Israel was in a hopeless situation, the world power of the day, Babylon, had them in slavery, they were spiritually and emotionally and morally and nationally bankrupt. They didn’t know whether God would ever do anything to save them. They didn’t even know if God had the power to do that. Well what does God do? He returns it back to Ezekiel. He says:

“Ezekiel, prophesy; speak over these bones.”

What does He return; does He return love or grace or touchy feely or mushy? No, He returns with the Word of God, because the Word of God is living and active and sharper than any two edged sword. He says:

Ezekiel, prophesy; speak my Word over these bones. Say to them, “Thus says the Lord God, “I will cause breath to enter you and you shall live and I will lay sinews on you and I will cause flesh to come upon you and cover you with skin and put breath in you and you will live and you will know that I am the Lord your God.”

God’s Word is powerful and mighty. God spoke creation into existence, He said:

Let there be light.

God calls things into existence that don’t yet exist. You can read that in Romans chapter 4 verse 17. Well, what happens? Let’s have a read – verse 7. So Ezekiel writes:

I prophesied as I was commanded to and as I prophesied, suddenly there was a noise, a rattling and the bones came together, bone to its bone. I looked and there were sinews on them and flesh had come up on them and skin had covered them, but there wasn’t any breath in them yet.

Surprise! Surprise! God said, “Speak my Word over this impossible situation,” so Ezekiel did and through God’s Word, in this vision that Ezekiel had, the bones came together. They had sinew, they had flesh, they had life; no breath yet, but they had life.

God’s Word is spoken and the dry bones become flesh and blood. Our problem, our circumstances, our feelings – when we get hungry in our situation, our valley of dry bones – where do we go? Do we go and feed on the world’s wisdom? Do we go and feed on our friend’s wisdom? Do we pick up the phone and have a whinge to a friend, or do we come to God’s Word and listen to what He has to say about our lives and His plan for our lives and then do we take Him at His Word? Jesus spent forty days and nights in the desert; He was hungry, He was famished, He was thirsty and when the devil tries to tempt Him in His valley of dry bones, this is what He says. He says, “Man doesn’t live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.” Come on! Where do we go?

We can have a junk food diet of TV shows and movies and women’s magazine and gossip, but how much time do we spend on those things compared to time in the Word. We are what we eat. We go to a Sunday sermon, we listen to it once, we don’t take any notes and we think, “Well why am I not growing?”

Come on; let’s get into God’s Word however we can. There’s power in God’s Word. Jesus said:

If you continue in my Word, you are truly my disciples.

You see, He links God’s Word to discipleship.

If you continue in my Word, you are truly my disciples and you will know the truth and the truth shall set you free.

We quote the second half of that normally. We say – the truth will set us free. No, no. Jesus said:

If you are my disciples you’ll be in my Word and my Word will be in you and you will continue in it and you will know the truth and by knowing the truth you will be set free.

A disciple is someone who delights in God’s Word; who radically believes it, who does it. Paul writes in Ephesians chapter 6 verse 17, about the sword of the Spirit being the Word of God. It’s an offensive weapon against Satan. It’s in the Word of God that we stand firm and it is the Word of God that changes things in our lives. That’s why we need to take God at His Word. We’ll see how this story with Ezekiel and Israel finishes up next.

But Wait – There’s More

Well, how does this story end up? We’ve been looking at how God takes Ezekiel out to look at this valley of dry bones, that represents where Israel is spiritually and emotionally and nationally towards the end of their exile, which really was a consequence of their sin; it was a consequence of them breaking their covenant and their promise with God. Well, we saw that Ezekiel spoke God’s Word over these dry bones and just as God had said, when His Word was spoken, all of a sudden flesh came on them, all of a sudden sinew came on them and all of the bones came together. That happened! But look at the end of verse 8 of Ezekiel, chapter 37. It says:

I looked and there was sinews and flesh and skin had covered them but there was no breath in them.

Now let’s read on in verses 9 and 10.

Then God said to me, “Prophesy to the breath; prophesy Mortal and say to the breath, “Thus says the Lord God, come from the four winds, oh breath, and breathe upon the slain, that they may live,” and I prophesied as He commanded and the breath came into them and they lived and stood on their feet – a vast multitude.

Wow! You see, God’s Word had been spoken and that gave the power to bring all the bones together, but they yet didn’t have breath. And the Hebrew word for breath is “ruwach”, which means a rushing wind and it’s the same word as is used for the Spirit. So when we are talking about the rushing wind, this is a symbol and a picture of the Spirit of God – it’s not just the Word of God – we need the Spirit of God too, which brings life and they stood up and they stood as a vast multitude.

Paul encourages us in Hebrews chapter 5 verse 18, to go on being “filled with the Spirit”. There are so many people who say, “Well I’m in God’s Word, you know, I believe in God’s Word,” and yet they go to the Word without the Spirit. They go to God’s Word and read it in their own strength, instead of saying, “God fill me with your Holy Spirit, fill me every day. I want to overflow with your Spirit.”

And when we see God’s Word; the power of God’s Word and the life that the Spirit brings, all of a sudden we see here that these bones in the valley, they come to life, through the “ruwach”, through the Spirit of God. Now we might come up with a wimpy response that says, “Well, you know, I’ve tried that but I’m so dry and the Spirit never touches me and ah …”

Have a look with me quickly in Luke chapter 11 verse 9 – this is a really well known passage where Jesus says:

I say to you, ask and it will be given you, search and you will find, knock and the door will be opened to you, because everyone who asks receives, everyone who searches finds, for everyone who knocks the door is opened. Is there any among you if your child asks for a fish that you’ll give a snake instead of a fish? Or if the child asks for bread, you’ll give them a scorpion instead? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more …

Listen to this:

… how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him? Jesus said, “knock, persist, ask and you will receive.

And when our hearts are fit to break, to be filled by the Spirit of God and we ask and we plead and we say, “Lord I’m not going to settle until I am so full with your Spirit that I’m overflowing; that streams of living water are running out of me.” When we are so desirous of that, God promises that He will fill us with His Spirit.

A.W. Tozer wrote this, he put it this way. He said:

Ransomed men need no longer pause in fear to enter the Holy of Holies. God wills that we should push into His presence and live our whole lives there. This is to be known to us in conscious experience. It is more than a doctrine to be held, it is a life to be enjoyed every moment of every day.

God’s Word has the power – God’s Spirit brings the life. Why does God work this way? What’s God doing? Why does He allow sin and Satan and why does He allow our lives to go through dry bones? Why do we have to go through this stuff?

Well, He answers that at the end of our passage that we are looking at, Ezekiel chapter 37 beginning at verse 11.

Then God said to me, “Mortal, these bones are the whole house of Israel.” So God interprets this vision for Ezekiel. These bones are the whole House of Israel. They say our bones are dried up and our hope is lost and we are cut off completely, therefore, prophesy and say to them, “Thus says the Lord your God, I am going to open your graves and bring you up from your graves, oh my people, and I will bring you back to the land of Israel and you will know that I am the Lord God when I open your graves and bring you up from your graves. My people, I will put my Spirit within you and you shall live. I will place you on your own soil and then you will know that I, the Lord your God, have spoken and will act, says the Lord God.”

Why does He allow this? So that He can bless us; so that we can receive redemption and life and renewal. Not through our own strength, but when God breathes His Spirit into us; when we believe His Word – when we take God at His Word. That valley of dry bones was a picture of Israel and God said to Ezekiel:

Go and tell them. Speak my Word over them and this is what I will do.

Those dry bones – those dry bones are our circumstances, our sin, our lives lost, our opportunities missed.

Let God show us the reality when we accept the power of His Word, when we accept Him at His Word and we accept His Holy Spirit which is life.

God’s having a party – it’s come as you are, but let’s believe His Word. God calls things that aren’t as though they are. God brings life when He gives us His Word to speak over our life and when He pours His Spirit out over our lives. The question is will you take God at His Word?

Sometimes, we head off in our own direction – and then we discover, at some point, that we’ve strayed so far away from God plans for our lives. We’ve all done it. You have, I have. And yet the amazing thing is that God always, always provides us with a way back home. Always.

Israel’s Dilemma

Over these last few weeks on Christianityworks, we’ve been looking at what it means to take God at His Word. Sometimes it can seem that God’s promises are just too good to be true. An abundant life full of blessing and we think, “Oh, yea – right!” But it also seems that some people who meet Jesus end up living out this abundant life of blessing, and well, others don’t. Why is that? I believe that one of the key factors of living a victorious life through our relationship with Jesus Christ is taking God at His Word. Because when we see all the troubles of life; when we see the struggles of life, sometimes it’s just too good to be true.

Today we are going to look at overcoming adversity, by taking God at His Word and it’s a special kind of adversity – it’s an adversity that we bring on ourselves, because sometimes we go through tough times as a direct consequence of our own actions and choices and behaviours. Bad choices, wrong motives, wrong thoughts, wrong behaviour have consequences. If I spend too much money on my credit card there are going to be financial consequences. If my wife Jacqui and I don’t spend time together, there are going to be consequences in our relationship.

We have to live out those consequences and a number of times through the Bible we see this principal “as we sow, so shall we reap”. It’s a spiritual, emotional and physical principal that free choice has consequences and we have this good and loving Father who lets us bear the consequences of our sin. The sin of gluttony – if we eat too much, we put on weight, we get lethargic, we get disease. What we eat and how we eat has a direct impact on our lives. There’s a cause and effect relationship – as we sow so shall we reap. And sometimes our own choices and decisions bring us to a place of adversity. Now, please, it’s not always like that.

If you read the story of the blind man – the man who was blind from birth, in John’s Gospel, chapter 9. Here was this man who was blind from birth and the disciples said to Jesus, “Well, who sinned – this man, his parents? What sin caused this man to be blind?” And Jesus said, “It’s no one’s fault; there’s no sin. This guy is blind so that I could heal him.”

And as I look back on my life, it’s certainly true. Sometimes I have done things that have brought consequences on my life, and have brought times of adversity. Sometimes it wasn’t my fault at all but today we are going to look at that specific form of adversity that comes when we are living out the consequences of our own sin. And when we are in that place; when we are in that place of adversity, how do we get out of it, how do we deal with that? What is God’s way? What is God’s wisdom for us?

We are going to go to the last book of the Old Testament – the Book of Malachi, chapter 3 and we will be looking at specifically verses 6 through 12, so if you have a Bible, go and grab it, open it up – it’s the last book before Matthew’s Gospel. It’s a short book – only a few pages long, and we are going to see the relevance of how God provides us with the road back.

Now in this particular passage, (you may have heard this passage a lot of times in your church) we are going to read just right now, verses 8 through 12. And it says this:

Will anyone rob God, yet you are robbing me? But you say, “How are we robbing you?

And God answers:

“In your tithes and offerings. You’re accursed with a curse for you are robbing me; the whole nation on you. Bring the full tithe into the storehouse so that there may be food in my house and thus put me to the test,” says the Lord of Hosts. “See if I won’t open the windows of heaven for you and pour down for you an overflowing blessing. I’ll rebuke the locusts for you so that it will not destroy the produce of you’re soil and your vine in the field shall not be barren,” says the Lord of Hosts. “Then all the nations will count you happy for you will be a land of delight.” says the Lord of Hosts.

Now in a lot of churches you hear that particular verse quoted and it says something like this, “If you tithe your income; that is if you give a tenth of your income to church, then God will open the windows of heaven and bless you. Now there is truth in that because there is a spiritual principle that “as we sow, so shall we reap”, and if we sow abundantly into God’s Kingdom then God will bless us abundantly. The problem is that we can take this verse on its own out of context, and all of a sudden God becomes like a slot machine. You know, we put a coin in and we pull the handle and the money flows out the bottom, and that’s not what God intended because this passage comes in a particular context; it comes in the context where Israel was supposed to be getting blessed.

You know, they started off with the promise of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, and Jacob had twelve boys and the whole of that family ended up in Egypt and they grew into a large nation and God took them out of slavery through the Red Sea, through the exodus of forty years in the desert into the Promised Land – the land that He had promised to Abraham. They went through a time where Judges ruled the land and then kings and then Israel split into two nations and because they were unfaithful.

In 586 BC, the Babylonian empire overran Jerusalem, destroyed them, took them into captivity for seventy years and then God brought them back after the seventy years. Now the exiles were turned back and you’d think they’d have it all sorted out by then, but they continued on with their failure to obey God.

There’s several wonderful pictures in the Books of Haggai and Zachariah, that once they come back from their Babylonian captivity that God will bless them – you know, God will pour out His blessing on this land, material prosperity. If you look at Zachariah chapter 8 verses 1 to 8, there’s this sense of the captives streaming back into this land of abundance. Yet, the completion of the temple – they rebuilt that – it hasn’t ushered in all this blessing. They had an expectation of blessing but instead of blessing, there’s Persian domination; there are hostile foreigners, there are plagues, there are droughts, there are locusts – it’s that like our Christian walk? God promises this enormous blessing and sometimes we turn around and say, “But, hang on a minute, this isn’t a blessing at all – this is hell – all these bad things are happening to me. God, why are these bad things happening? What’s going wrong? We are going to have a look at exactly what God tells Israel, next.

God’s Perspective

Well, there was Israel; they were back in the Promised Land again. They’d had prophesy after prophesy of blessing and all of a sudden they discover – they turn around and say, “Life is actually awful. Life is not going well at all.” Have a look what Malachi writes in chapter 3 verses 13 to 15:

You have spoken harsh words against me, says the Lord, yet you say, “How have we spoken against you? You’ve said it is vain to serve God, what do we profit by keeping His command or by going about as mourners before the Lord of Hosts? Now we count the arrogant happy; evil doers only prosper but when they put God to the test, they escape.

In other words, things were not going as well for Israel as they expected from the prophesies that they had been given.

Now Malachi is the last of the Minor Prophets, the last book of the Hebrew Canon – the Old Testament and it’s a monologue from God. It’s God’s perspective; God points them to the problem and He gives them the solution. And here’s the problem – let’s just move quickly through the Book of Malachi and have a look what God says. In chapter 1 verse 2, He says this:

“I’ve loved you,” says the Lord, “but you say, “How have you loved us?” “Is not Esau Jacob’s brother,” says the Lord, “Yet I have loved Jacob but I have hated Esau. I have made his hill country desolation and his heritage a desert for jackals.” God says ‘I have preferred you;’ when He says ‘I have loved Jacob,’ He is saying ‘I have loved you.’ God says, “I love you, yet you show contempt for God’s love.”

And then you look further down, in verse 6, and He says:

Look, a son honours his father, and servants their master. If I then am a Father, where is the honour due to me and if I am your master, where is the respect due to me? , says the Lord of Hosts, to you. O priest who despise my name. You say, “How have we despised you name?” By offering polluted food on your alter and you say, “How have we polluted it?” By thinking that the Lord’s Table may be despised. When you offer blind animals in sacrifice, isn’t that wrong? Oh, that someone among you would shut the temple doors so that you would not kindle the fire on my alter in vain.

They weren’t putting God first – they weren’t giving God their best. The whole sacrificial system was set up so that animals would be sacrificed – a blood sacrifice – to atone for sin. Now we don’t go through that any more because Jesus is our blood sacrifice; Jesus died for us. We are forgiven through that sacrifice but that wasn’t the case back then and God had commanded them to give their best – their first fruits, their best animals, their best food in sacrifice. And these people were giving God their second best or their third best and worse than that, the priests were bored. Look at verse 13:

“What a weariness this is,” you say and sniff at me, says the Lord. You bring what has been taken by violence or is lame or sick and this you bring as an offering?

And further down, in chapter 2:

And now, oh priest, this command is for you, if you will not listen, if you will not lay it to heart, to give glory to me, says the Lord of Hosts, then I will send a curse on you and I will curse your blessing and indeed, I have already cursed them because you do not lay it to heart.

They’re hearts weren’t in it. They were going through religious rituals without ever really thinking about it and the population followed them. In verses 8 and 9, it says this:

But you’ve turned aside from the way. You have caused many to stumble in your instruction; you’ve corrupted the promise of Levi, says the Lord of Hosts and so I make you despised and abased before all the people inasmuch as you have not kept my ways but you have shown partiality in your instruction.

So God’s people have been through this enormous thing as a nation, where Jerusalem was destroyed and burnt down; for seventy years they were in captivity; they come back.

Wouldn’t you think they would have learnt their lesson? Wouldn’t you think they’d have it all sorted out? No! No, no. they do the same thing over and over again and then look what happens – verse 13 of chapter 2:

And this you do as well: you cover the Lord’s alter with tears, with weeping and groaning because He no longer regards the offering or accepts it with favour at your hand and you ask, “Why doesn’t He?” Because the Lord was a witness between you and the wife of your youth, to whom you have been faithless, though she is your companion and your wife by covenant. Did not God make her? Both flesh and Spirit are His and what does God desire? Godly offspring. So look to yourselves and do not let anyone be faithless to the wife of his youth. For I hate divorce, says the Lord God of Israel, and covering one’s garments with violence, says the Lord of Hosts, so take heed to yourselves and do not be faithless.

He is talking to a faithless nation – people were getting divorced, they were being unfaithful to their wives, they weren’t honouring God, they weren’t putting Him first and surprise, surprise – God didn’t bless them!! Surprise, surprise, they were not living in the blessing that God had planned for them. The problem, according to God is sin and God says, “You wonder why you are not being blessed.” And they’re thinking, “Has God taken a holiday; can’t He cope with us? Doesn’t God want to bless me? Why are the locusts eating our food, what’s going on? And God says, “It’s not my faithfulness that’s at stake here, it’s yours. I chose you; I uphold you and I continue to bless you. I chose you, I uphold you and the only reason you are still alive is because I am the same.”

Look at what He says in chapter 3 verse 6.

For I the Lord your God do not change, therefore you, O children of Jacob, have not perished. The only reason I haven’t destroyed you is because I made a promise to Abraham and to Isaac – I promised to bless their offspring and you are their offspring. If I hadn‘t made that promise, I would have destroyed you by now. The problem is your sin; your imperfect offerings, not the best fruits, not the first fruits, the second, the third and the forth fruits.

You’re bored with me; you’re unfaithful and we do that sometimes in our Christian walk too. We’re a living sacrifice – we don’t give God our best, we get bored with God, we stop reading God’s Word, we stop praying, we stop enjoying His presence and we chase after other gods and we chase after worldly ideals and God says, “What’s the matter with you? Are you surprised that you are not being blessed? The most important thing for God is the relationship that we have – He takes it so seriously – His Son died to give us that and we race off and we do other things and we wonder why God isn’t blessing us. We are living through the consequences of our own sin, of our own rejection, of our own rebellion of God, and because the relationship is so important to God, He won’t let the blessing flow while we’re doing that. It’s His way of giving us a wakeup call; it’s His way of bringing us back home; it’s His way of saying, “I love you”, so when we’re living through the consequences of our sin, can I encourage you to hear those words in the middle of that – “I love you so much, I’ll let you live through those consequences.”

Well, God made a road back for Israel and we are now going to look at what that road looks like.

The Way Home

We are looking at this whole dilemma of what happens when we live out the consequences of our rebellion of God and this is where we pick up the answer. God looks at Israel through this Book of Malachi and says, “You people have forsaken me, despite every thing you’ve been through in the Babylonian captivity. You haven’t learned, you’re not putting me first, you’re not honouring me, you’re just going through a religious mumbo-jumbo and routine, but really, your hearts not in it and I want your heart, and until your hearts in it, well, you are not going to be blessed by me.” And the people rightly go, “well, what are we going to do about it?”

In fact they ask that question in the Book of Malachi. Let’s look at it – beginning at chapter 3 verse 7.

Ever since the days of your ancestors you have turned aside from my statutes and have not kept them, says the Lord. Return to me and I will return to you, says the Lord of Hosts, but you say, “How shall we return?”

This is the crux of this whole small Book of Malachi. They’ve left God and God says, “I want to be with you; I want to bless you; I want to spend time with you, come back to me and I will come back to you.”

God always, “always” wants to have a relationship with us. There’s never a time where God says, “Well, you know, I know this person believes in me but they’ve been so bad, I’m never going to spend any time with them again. I’m going to reject them.” NO! Because He sent Jesus to die for me; He sent Jesus to die for you. There is never a time where God rejects us in this life.

And here the people say, “Well, ok, ok! We know that we’ve done the wrong thing. We know we’ve failed. We know we’ve gone in the wrong direction. Um, but now what? How do we come back to you? You say, “How shall we return to you?” and in answer to that question, this is what God says. This passage about tithing that we read earlier on. He said, “Will any one rob God? Yet you are robbing me.” Isn’t it interesting? “How shall we return to you?” And God points to one thing that they are doing wrong. “Will anyone rob God? Yet you are robbing me. But you say, how are you robbing me? In your tithes and your offerings! You are cursed with a curse because you are robbing me – the whole nation of you.”

You see part of the Mosaic Law; part of the law of Israel; part of the law of what we call the Old Testament today, was that every one of God’s people had to give one tenth of their income to God’s work. It was called a tithe; a tenth; it was part of the law. It was almost … well it was, it was exactly like, we have to pay taxes today and if I avoid my taxes, the Tax Office will come after me and ultimately I can be fined or put into jail – it’s against the law and Israel was breaking God’s law by not giving God the tenth; the tithe, that was due to Him and God said, “You’re robbing me.”

Now they were doing a whole bunch of other things wrong too – we read it before; they weren’t putting God first, their heart wasn’t in it, they were just going through the actions, they were being unfaithful, husbands and wives, but God just picks one thing out of that in answer to the question, “How shall we return?” God says, “This is the one thing I want you to do. I’m not going to get you to fix everything and all your mistakes and all your sin and all your rebellion at once, I’m just going to pick one thing. Start tithing again, bring the full tithe into the storehouse so that there may be food in my house. Sow seed while things aren’t going well, because things weren’t going well – locusts were eating their food. They didn’t have a lot to spare.

“Bring the full tithe into my storehouse, that there may be food in my house and thus put me to the test,” says the Lord of Hosts, “See if I will not open the windows of heaven for you and pour out for you an overflowing blessing.”

How can we come home? “Just do this one thing – just obey me because loving me is obedience – obedience that you can actually cope with.” Don’t you love that about God? We may have a problem in one area of our life but God knows who we are, what we can cope with, so He may choose something quite different, in another area, and says, “Be obedient in this area, that I know you can cope with and when you have been obedient there; when you’re working there, that bit that I have put my finger on through my Spirit and my Word, when that’s working, just watch and I’ll bless you. And then as I am blessing you, there are lots of other things that we are going to deal with too, but I know you can’t deal with those now, so just deal with this one issue.”

I think that’s awesome! And then God says, “I’ll rebuke the locusts, I’ll make sure they don’t destroy your food, I’ll make sure that the vine isn’t barren, that the windows of heaven will be open and my blessing will pour out. That’s God’s love – that’s God’s encouragement because God rewards our faithfulness. No father will bless a child that is not being faithful. Dad wants to bless us, but He wants more than that – a relationship with us. That is just so awesome and look what it says down in verse 16 of chapter 3, just finishing up this discussion of God’s blessing.

Then those who revered the Lord spoke with one another and the Lord took note and listened and a book of remembrance was written before Him of those who revered the Lord and thought on His name. They shall be mine, says the Lord of Hosts; my special possession on the day when I act and I will spare them as parents spare their children who serve them.

Wow! God wants to bless us but that blessing – that hand of blessing comes off our lives when we rebel against God, because more important than the blessing is the relationship. More that any thing, God wants to have a relationship with us and so if your traveling through a time in your life when you know that you are living the consequences of your own failures and your own sin, I would encourage you to do this – go to God and say, “Lord how shall I return?” And I promise that God will speak to you through His Spirit in the most amazing way and say, “Be obedient to me in just this one area of your life and put me to the test. See if I won’t open the windows of heaven and pour out all my blessings on you.” It’s time to take God at His Word.

At some point, we all end up at the end of our rope. Sometimes it’s our own fault. Sometimes it’s not. At those times – we feel that we need to do something – it’s like the last roll of the dice …

Jesus Christ Superstar

It is just fantastic to be with you again today and today we are going through the last message in a four week series called, “Taking God at His Word”. God makes a whole bunch of promises in His Word about who we are in Christ. Jesus, when you think about it, is the “feel good” factor, but every time I get up and I say, “We need to feel good about who we are in Christ,” someone will come up to me afterwards and say, “No, no, no, we shouldn’t talk that way. We’re sinners; we shouldn’t be full of ourselves. No, you shouldn’t talk that way.” And my answer is, “Come on! Jesus came to give us abundant life – life to the full. He said, “When I set you free, you’ll be free indeed.” And again, later, Paul, the Apostle, writes, “For freedom, we have been set free.”

The whole point of Jesus dying on the cross to pay for our weaknesses and our failures – yeah our sin – and Him rising again, the whole point of that – the death and resurrection – is that we should have a new life – a fresh start when we put our faith in Him. That doesn’t mean that there’s a magic wand and nothing bad will ever happen to us and that we won’t face adversity – no, it doesn’t mean that. But it means that we can face everything that the world throws at us; that life throws at us and feel good about who we are in Jesus Christ. Since the day that Jesus came into my life, into my heart I have been able to feel good about myself. Not because of who I am; not because of what I’ve done but because who Jesus is and what He’s done for me.

We need to ditch the self-image – and we all have a self-image of who we are – sometimes that is an arrogant, pompous self-image, as mine was and sometimes it is such a low self-image. You know, people who suffer with low self-esteem have a low self-image. We need to take that and say that’s the old man; that person is dead. I have a new image of who I am. I am made in the image of God and I am going to have a faith image. It is time, people, to take God at His Word.

The first three programs in this series – firstly three weeks ago, we started off with a program called, ‘Come as you are’ and we saw how God says that we have Jesus, the High Priest, who knows exactly what it’s like to walk in our shoes, because He has and because of that, because of Jesus, we can and should come boldly before the throne of grace. It’s like God’s having a barbecue; God’s having a party and it’s “come as you are”. It’s not – let’s change ourselves before we come to God – no, come as you are and let Him change us. Big step – take God at His Word!

And then two weeks ago we looked at Ezekiel chapter 37, in a message called, “Can these bones live”. We saw how God called Ezekiel to prophesy over Israel and to raise them up from being a valley full of dead bones, to being alive and full of God’s life and full of God’s breath and when we come to Him feeling dead; like a valley full of dry bones, that’s exactly what He wants to do for us. It’s time to take God at His Word! And last week we looked at overcoming adversity God’s way. We saw how Israel had strayed yet again from God and in the Book of Malachi, God pointed out their sin and their failure and He gave them a way back, specifically for them, something that they could cope with and so they took God at His Word.

Today we are going to look at another form of adversity. That adversity was a consequence of Israel’s own rebellion against God and that happens – we do that sometimes, but this week I’d like to look at the sort of adversity that happens that’s not our fault – when you get retrenched or someone you love dies or a relationship breaks down or sickness strikes us or we just feel this heaviness – the list can be as long as your arm. What happens to us on the inside is that we feel small and alone and insignificant and Jesus is Jesus, yes He’s Jesus, but He’s the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords. He’s high and He’s mighty and He created the whole universe. Does He have the time or the inclination or the will to help me when I’m in the middle of that? Yeah, I know, we know it in our heads, but in our hearts, right at those times?

It can be so difficult to realise that God wants to help us. So we are going to look at someone that Jesus helped; it was the woman who had been bleeding for twelve years. He helped her when she was a nobody and when He was everybody – He was Jesus Christ, Superstar. Let’s have a read; if you have a Bible, grab it and let’s go to Mark chapter 5, beginning at verse 21. This is how it goes.

When Jesus had crossed again in the boat to the other side, a great crowd gathered around Him and He was by the sea. Then one of the leaders of the synagogue, named Jairus, came and when Jairus saw Jesus, he fell at His feet and begged Him repeatedly, “My little daughter is at the point of death. Come, come and lay your hands on her so that she may be made well and live.” And so Jesus went with Jairus.

A large crowd followed them and pressed in on Jesus. Now there was a woman who had been suffering from hemorrhages for twelve years. She had endured much under many physicians and had spent all that she had and she was no better, but rather she grew worse. She heard about Jesus and came up behind Him in the crowd and touched His cloak, because she said to herself, “If I can just touch His clothes I’ll be made well.”

Immediately, her hemorrhaging stopped and she felt in her body that she was healed of her disease. Immediately aware that power had gone out of Him, Jesus turned around in the crowd and said, “Who touched my clothes?” His disciples said to Him, “You can see the whole crowd is pressing in on you, how can you say, “Who touched me?”

But Jesus looked all around to see who’d done it. The woman, knowing what had happened to her, came in fear and trembling and fell down before Jesus and told Him the whole truth, and He said to her, “Daughter, your faith has made you well, go in peace and be healed.” While He was still speaking, some people came from the leader’s house, from Jairus’s place to say “Your daughter is dead, don’t trouble the teacher any further,” but overhearing what they said, Jesus said to the leader of the synagogue, “Don’t fear, only believe.”

The crux of this story is that Jesus is walking along and the leader of a synagogue, Jairus, comes to Him because his daughter is dying and yet, what is going to Jairus’s house which is a pressing need – the guy’s daughter is dying – this woman stops Jesus on the way and He has time to spend with her. Look at the key players; there is a power play going on here in this story. The crowd, the disciples, Jairus, Jesus, the woman, Jairus’s friends and of course, Jairus’s daughter and we see that this huge crowd was following Jesus and Jesus had been doing miracle after miracle and so He was attracting a really huge crowd. I remember when I was a young boy and the Beatles came to town, and the crowds were all around. This, this is Jesus Christ Superstar, and yet He has time to stop for this woman.

Who’s Got the Power

We’re looking today on the program at this story of the bleeding woman; this woman who’d be struggling and she’d been to doctors and she’d lost all her money – had been struggling for twelve years and Jesus comes to town; Jesus Christ Superstar, followed by this huge crowd. Jairus, the synagogue leader, gets to Him first and a power play happens. Let’s just look at the woman and Jairus – just compare them. Here were two people that both came to Jesus with a need – Jairus, his daughter was dying. Well, that’s a big need; there was an urgency around that. And this woman – this woman had been struggling for twelve years in sickness.

Let’s just do a bit of a comparison. In this first century, patriarchal society; on the one hand Jairus was a man, she was a woman and women in those days were often treated just as a possession. See it was a patriarchal society. He was the leader of a synagogue – he was a religious leader – he was somebody in this town.

This woman, she had no position – he was respected, she was despised. He had an identity; we know his name – Jairus. Tell me, what was the woman’s name? We don’t read her name in the story; she had no identity, she was a nobody – we never get to find out what her name was. He was close to God; he was a leader in the synagogue, but she, she was an outcast. You say to me, “Berni, how do you know that she was an outcast; she was just a woman that was sick? No, no, no. She had been bleeding for twelve years and under to Mosaic Law, this woman was unclean and so she was an outcast.

Just flip your Bible, if you have one, back to Leviticus, right at the beginning, in the law; in the Torah. This is the Jewish, Hebrew Law that was laid down under God’s hand. The law under which Israel lived and in chapter 15 of Leviticus, verse 25, it says this:

If a woman has a discharge of blood for many days, not at the time of her impurity or if she has a discharge beyond the time of her impurity, all the days of her discharge she shall continue in uncleanness. As in the days of her impurity, she shall be unclean. Every bed, on which she lies during all the days of her discharge, shall be treated as the bed of her impurity and everything on which she sits, shall be unclean as in the uncleanness of her impurity. Who ever touches these things shall be unclean and shall wash his clothes and bathe in water as be unclean until the evening. If she is cleansed of her discharge, she shall count seven days and after that she shall be clean.

On the eighth day she shall take two turtle doves or two pigeons and bring them to the priest, to the entrance to the Tent of the Meeting and the priest shall offer one for a sin offering and the other for a burnt offering and the priest shall make atonement on her behalf, before the Lord, on her behalf for her unclean discharge. Thus you shall keep the people of Israel separate from their uncleanness, so that they do not die in their uncleanness by defiling my tabernacle that is in their midst.

Seems bizarre to us, right? This woman was sick; you know, she was discharging blood; it wasn’t just her normal period. She was sick for a long time, but the law said she was unclean and if anyone came into contact with her or anything she’d touched, they were unclean. So she was a social outcast for those twelve years.

We know about Jairus; he had family and friends and home. We don’t find out anything about the woman. We know that Jairus had a daughter who was twelve years old and yet this woman had suffered for that same period – twelve years.

We know that there was risk for Jairus; he was a synagogue leader – he threw himself down before Jesus. We will look at that a bit later. There was risk for the woman too because she was pressing through the crowd and everyone she touched became unclean.

If they knew that, they might not be so happy with her. And for both of them it was a last resort. For Jairus, his daughter was dying. For this woman, she tried everything, it was a last resort and they both came to Jesus in faith. So on the one hand you had this man of power and position and status and family – he had everything except his daughter was dying. On the other hand you had a woman with no name, who’s unclean, who’s an outcast and they both came to Jesus in faith. You had the greatest and the least – Jairus and the bleeding woman. That’s the point of these two people.

Well, who’s got the power? Jesus arrives back from being across the sea and He comes back and He lands and there’s a big, big crowd and Jairus, who is known by all the people in the crowd, comes and throws himself down before Jesus. Jesus has been doing some radical things. He’d been healing; people were upset with Him and yet Jairus bows down before Him and puts the power in Jesus hands. And Jesus is coming with Jairus and now Jesus has the power; Jesus has the status. Jairus has bowed down before Jesus and elevated Him by so doing and Jesus chooses to use the power for this woman.

The amazing thing is that she came to Him, Jesus Christ Superstar, the crowd pressing in; Jesus is rushing off through this crowd. I imagine the disciples were like bouncers, you know, kind of clearing everyone away – “we’re in a hurry, this Jairus guy’s daughter is dying, let’s get Jesus there before she dies.” And Jesus has time to spend with her. We’ll look at how astounding that is when she touched Him in faith and His power flowed into her and she was healed. We’ll look at the really astounding thing about that, next.

The Whole Truth

Well we are working our way through this story of the woman who was sick for twelve years and she touched Jesus from a crowd and she was healed. Healing takes us all by surprise but what happened here for this woman is she came to Jesus in faith; she just took Him at His Word; and in the crowd where, when Jesus was rushing off with Jairus; this man of power and position, to go and heal his daughter who was dying. And the disciples were kind of being like bouncers just to get Him through the crowds.

This woman touches Jesus and He stops and He turns around and He says, “Who touched me?” and the disciples laugh at Him and say, “Come on, Jesus, like there’s a crowd around you. What’s the matter with you – who touched you?” but He wasn’t perturbed, He wanted to know who touched Him. Look at verse 33 of Mark chapter 5, if you have a Bible. It says this:

The woman, knowing what had happened to her, came in fear and trembling and fell down before Him and told Him the whole truth.

The whole truth; literally, all the truth.

I looked it up in a Greek dictionary. That word ‘all’ means each, every, any, all, the whole, everything, all things, anything, the whole cotton-picking lot! Hmm. Twelve years she’s been bleeding, she’s been suffering, she’s been going to doctors, she’s an outcast, she’s segregated, she can’t worship with anyone else in the synagogue – pretty rough trot this woman’s had for twelve years and let’s face it, there was no hot and cold running water so she probably stank too and people talked about her. She told Jesus the whole truth.

Now Jesus is rushing off to heal Jairus’s daughter who’s dying, the crowd stops – everything stops – like – stop!! And Jesus is focused on the woman and she bows down before Him in fear and trembling and she tells Him the whole truth. Now how long do you think it took her to tell the whole truth? It wasn’t just a minute or two. The whole truth, she told Him the whole story; all the pain, everything that had happened over those twelve years. My hunch is it took at least five to ten minutes, maybe a bit more.

I’ve often taken this passage and had people play-act it out in churches and whenever I’ve asked a woman to play this role and tell the whole truth, it’s taken at least five to ten minutes. What about Jairus’s daughter – they’re rushing off – she’s dying? How do you think Jairus is feeling in the middle of this five to ten to fifteen minutes of pause on the way to heal his daughter who’s dying? I’m Jairus, I’m a synagogue leader, my daughter is dying, Jesus, come on. This is just some woman, you know, some nameless woman, who’s unclean, come back to her later. Jairus had begged Jesus repeatedly to come with him; there’s urgency – but on the way Jesus has time to stop for a nobody.

Don’t you love that? Jesus stopped and listened as though He had time a plenty. And He was so pleased with her – He said to her, “Daughter, your faith as made you well. Go in peace and be healed of your disease.” Jesus stopped for the nobody, but while He was still speaking, the friends of Jairus came and said, “Jairus, sorry but your kid’s dead. Don’t bring Jesus over, it’s just too late.”

In other words, there was the greatest and the least; Jairus and the woman. And as we see later in the story – we won’t read it all today, but Jesus went and He raised Jairus’s daughter from the dead. But when He was dealing with the greatest and the least, position made no difference to Him. Status made no difference to Him, man or woman, synagogue leader or nobody, clean or unclean – He didn’t care, in fact He put the least first. And at the end of the day, Jesus had enough for both of them – it wasn’t one or the other.

You know, when we are struggling – this woman was going through hell for twelve years – our problems may not be like hers but our problems are our problems and they seem just as big and just as painful and we look around and we think, “This Jesus Christ Superstar, He’s out there for someone else – He’s going to heal the synagogue leader; He’s going to do the stuff for the super Christian over there but me… you know, it’s just little old me in my dark little hole, with all my pain and problems and Jesus is never going to do anything for me – this is God’s Word; this is God’s Word and it says this is what God looks like. Jesus said if you want to see the Father, look at me because you have seen the Father. Later on in the Book of Hebrews, in chapter 1, it says that Jesus is the exact imprint or the exact image of God.

Jesus Christ Superstar heard the father’s plea for the daughter, He went with the father and yet He delayed and stopped and listened to and blessed the very least. What got them both a miracle? What was it for Jairus and for this woman that got them both a miracle? It wasn’t position, it wasn’t status – it was a desperate last roll of the dice, faith in Jesus Christ. That was what Jesus praised her for – He said, “Daughter, your faith has made you well, go in peace.” And later on Jesus says to Jairus, “Don’t listen to them, don’t be afraid, just believe in me. Just continue that faith that brought you to a point of bowing down before me in that crowd, when everyone could have laughed at you; take that faith and hang onto that thought and let me do a miracle for you in your life.”

This is God’s Word. God is telling us through this story more powerfully than He could in any other words, what He is like – “This is what I am like for you, I don’t care whether you are the greatest or the least, I don’t care whether you are a man or a woman, I don’t care whether your adversity is any bigger or worse than anyone else’s, I’m here for you, here and now; here for your pain, here for your sick daughter, here for your particular situation and it doesn’t matter who you are, come to me, touch me in faith, cry out to me in faith and let me be the miracle working God in your life. What’s going on in your life at the moment; what pain, what need, what fear, what miracle do you need?

Can I encourage you to look at this picture of Jesus; this picture of God and to cast the eyes of your soul upon this Jesus and in faith to say, “Lord, I need your help.” It is time to take God at His Word.