Luk 8:40-56 | KingComments | STEP | When the Lord returns, a hearty welcome awaits Him. All are looking forward to Him. Thus will the Lord in the future be received by His people in truth. Now it is still because of His blessings and not because of the need of their sins, but the attitude is beautiful. Do we also look forward to Him? He can come any moment, for He has said: “I am coming soon.” A man comes forward out of the crowd. It is Jairus, an official of the synagogue. As an official of the synagogue, Jairus is a prominent and distinguished Jew who is closely connected to the law. He is not an opponent of the Lord. On the contrary, he appeals to Him in his distress while he falls at His feet. Everyone sees this attitude, but he is not ashamed of it. He implores the Lord to come to his house. This is the way a Jew expects healing. He expects the Messiah to come to the place where he lives. With the Gentile centurion we have seen a greater faith, for he believed in the power of the Lord’s word ( ). Jairus’ only daughter is in need. She is twelve years old and is dying. She was brought up in the atmosphere of the law, but that does not prevent her from dying soon. The appeal that Jairus makes to the Lord is not in vain. Surrounded by the crowd, He sets off for the house of Jaïrus. The condition of the girl represents the condition of the people. The people are dying and the Lord has come to heal the people.

‏ Luke 8:40-56

Jairus Implores the Lord for His Daughter

When the Lord returns, a hearty welcome awaits Him. All are looking forward to Him. Thus will the Lord in the future be received by His people in truth. Now it is still because of His blessings and not because of the need of their sins, but the attitude is beautiful. Do we also look forward to Him? He can come any moment, for He has said: “I am coming soon.”

A man comes forward out of the crowd. It is Jairus, an official of the synagogue. As an official of the synagogue, Jairus is a prominent and distinguished Jew who is closely connected to the law. He is not an opponent of the Lord. On the contrary, he appeals to Him in his distress while he falls at His feet.

Everyone sees this attitude, but he is not ashamed of it. He implores the Lord to come to his house. This is the way a Jew expects healing. He expects the Messiah to come to the place where he lives. With the Gentile centurion we have seen a greater faith, for he believed in the power of the Lord’s word (Lk 7:7).

Jairus’ only daughter is in need. She is twelve years old and is dying. She was brought up in the atmosphere of the law, but that does not prevent her from dying soon. The appeal that Jairus makes to the Lord is not in vain. Surrounded by the crowd, He sets off for the house of Jaïrus. The condition of the girl represents the condition of the people. The people are dying and the Lord has come to heal the people.

The Woman Who Had a Hemorrhage

In the crowd is still someone with a need. It is a woman who has suffered blood loss for twelve years. She has kept herself hidden. Her hemorrhage made her unclean (Lev 15:19-27) and also unfit for worship. The woman was not allowed to eat from the peace offering. She had been outcast from that, already for twelve years.

In connection with the age of Jairus’s daughter – she was twelve years old after all – it shows that the people have been unclean throughout their history, from the very beginning. The daughter represents the state of all the people of Israel, to which the Lord is on His way to give them life. The woman represents the individual of the people of Israel, who break away from the crowd to find healing already now on the basis of personal faith.

Life slowly flowed out of her. She had spent everything she had to live on, to be cured of her ailment. All the doctors she had visited and paid to be cured had not been able to cure her. She has no more money and no hope of recovery. There remains only one possibility for her: Christ.

That is how it has been with countless people who have tried everything to get peace in their heart. They have spent a capital, but it has not given them inner peace. They have done all kinds of things, but instead of finding peace and rest, the lack of peace and rest has only increased. Until they came into contact with the Lord Jesus in their need. When they entrusted their lives to Him, they found peace and rest.

The woman stays in the crowd, but she manages to get so close to the Lord that she can touch the fringe of His cloak. Once she has done that, she notices that she has been healed. The hemorrhage stops immediately. It is only a touch and that at the lower part of His cloak, but she receives the full blessing because she has done it in faith. The fringe means the tassels at the bottom of the cloak in which the blue cord is woven (Num 15:38). She has bowed herself deeply to appeal to heaven, of which the blue cord speaks.

She touched the Lord from behind, but He wants to bring her into His presence, face to face. He wants to let her know that He wholeheartedly agrees with her healing. It now seems as if she has stolen that healing, but in reality the cause lies in the touch of faith. So He says: “Who is the one who touched Me?”

As all deny it, Peter and others try to show the Lord the illogicalness of His question. How can He ask that anyway! The people are crowding and pressing in on Him. Many have touched Him. It is indeed true that everyone in His direct surrounding has touched Him, but these are not touches done in faith.

The Lord does not ask any further, but then states that someone has touched Him. It was not the crowds pressing in on Him. That happened completely unintentionally. The touch he noticed was a conscious touch, a touch in faith in Who He is. Someone has resorted to Him in true faith, however weak that faith may have been.

The pressing in of the crowds did not make power gone out of Him. That way, the Lord did not heal. Such pressing in is of no use to get a blessing from Him. But the believer who is in His presence and touching Him, however modest and shy, always receives a blessing from Him.

Then the woman makes herself known. Trembling she comes to the Lord. She falls down before Him and, as all the people hear it, she tells them why she touched Him and that she has been healed immediately. The woman gives a great testimony of faith to the people about the Lord Jesus and His power.

After having openly told the “whole truth” (Mk 5:33), she receives from the Lord the assurance of forgiveness of her sins. He deliberately uses the word “daughter” because it expresses His affection for her to take away her fear and anxiety. Then He gives for her soul what only He can give: peace. What a joy it will be for her to remember the words He spoke to her. He gave her His guarantee by comforting her when she was so fearful. He acknowledged her faith, weak as it was, and finally sent her away with a message of peace. This is worth more than the healing of the body.

Jairus’ Daughter Has Died

Jairus, who came to the Lord first, does not receive the blessing first. It is for the woman who has appealed to the Lord along the way. That is how it is with Israel, of whom Jairus is a picture, and the believers from the nations, of whom we can see a picture in the woman. The Lord was on the way to heal Israel, but He was rejected by the people. That has made the way free to bless the nations. That is the time in which we live now.

The Lord also has healing for Israel, even if life has totally disappeared from it. After the period of blessing for the nations, He returns to bring Israel to life. That shows the continuation of the history, where we see the real state of Israel. Israel is not only sick, but dead, but Christ possesses in Himself resurrection life.

Happiness and salvation are only obtained through faith in His Person, in the Divine power in Him, in the grace that comes to exercise this power. The Jews have been rebellious in their unbelief for so long. They have tried for so long to eradicate the Name of Him, Who by certain statements made Himself equal to God. Nevertheless they will recognize their rejected Messiah as their Lord and their God and their dry bones will come to live (Eze 37:1-10).

All Israel – that is to say, the faithful remnant – will finally be saved (Rom 11:25-26). The people will blossom and outgrow and fill the surface of the earth with fruits! That promise is enclosed in the resurrection of the deceased girl. He Who commanded the girl’s father not to fear but to believe, will fulfill the promise He once gave.

This history also contains much that encourages us in our personal life of faith. The Lord is on earth to make known the grace of God to all people. We too may drink from this grace by applying the lessons from these histories to ourselves.

While the Lord is still speaking, someone from the official of the synagogue comes with a message to the official. His daughter has died. The communication is followed by the resigned statement not to trouble the Teacher anymore. As if we trouble Him when in our opinion there is nothing more to do anyway. If, according to our assessment of the situation, there is nothing more to do, it is faith that matters. That is also what the Lord answers when He hears the message.

He went to Jairus’ house to heal his daughter. Then it is not possible that a ‘coincidental’ delay should cause a hindrance to heal. The Lord knows the weakness of faith and first reassures Jairus with the encouragement: “Do not be afraid.”

In this way He also meets our weak faith. What seems to be an obstacle to the weak faith, that He cannot do what He promised, He will use to show His power of grace more clearly. The power of His grace is shown the most when the situation is most hopeless.

After the encouragement not to be afraid, the Lord says that Jairus must do what remains if the situation is completely hopeless: “Only believe.” With this He says: ‘Put your trust completely on Me.’

The Daughter of Jairus Resurrected

The Lord comes to the house. He only allows the three disciples who were with Him on the mountain to enter with the girl’s father and mother. They may witness how He brings her to life. For the three disciples it will again be a special encouragement with a view to their later service for the Lord. The father and mother may also be there, because He wants to give the child back to their care immediately. They have shown their concern by calling on His help.

There are also people present who only see death, but they are standing outside the door. He tells them that they can stop weeping because the girl has not died, but is asleep. To Him, death is a sleep from which He can awaken someone. Where He is, death must give way. Nor has anyone ever died in the Lord’s direct surroundings. The people who are weeping and lamenting for the girl when hearing His words change immediately their attitude and start laughing at Him. So little do these people understand the power of God. They have no eye for the power of life in Him.

The Lord does not answer them, but takes the hand of the child. Then He calls the words: “Child, arise!” He calls because she has to wake up. He calls “saying”, for his words will wake her up. The girl hears the voice of the Son of God and her spirit returns to her and she becomes alive (Jn 5:25). Just as the blood flow stopped “immediately” (Lk 8:44-47), so here too the result is “immediately”. There is no process of waking up. She gets up immediately.

The care of the Lord goes beyond giving her life. He gives orders to give her to eat. She has suffered a lot and needs to regain her strength. This is also important with anyone who receives new life that he gets to eat. The new life must be fed with sound spiritual food. That is God’s Word in the first place.

The parents who have so lived in the atmosphere of the law and had raised their child with the law, are deeply impressed by the grace of the Lord. All their good intentions were aimed at making their child live, but they had to state that the only result was death. Now they have appealed to Someone Who proves grace and they have gotten the life of their daughter.

Grace is always a matter that causes amazement to those who live in a lawful atmosphere. In connection with His service, the Lord wants this wonder to remain hidden, for He must be accepted on the basis of the testimony He gives to the conscience and the heart. The resurrection of the daughter of Jairus is a transient act, although full of life power. It is an incidental event. The time that will be characterized by a general blessing, has not yet come. Therefore the Lord commands them not to tell anyone what has happened. If He Himself is not accepted, if one refuses to accept His word, it is in vain to make His power generally public.