Sometimes we get multiple sermons on a Sunday morning, both what is preached in the sermon, but also what is sung in the hymns and choruses and spiritual songs. Thank you, those who chose the songs this morning. They were a real blessing. And I encourage you, as we think of this presentation, this debate happening on Sunday evening, to Tuesday evening, thank you.
To be in prayer for this. To be in prayer, of course, as we would tend to say for our side. To pray for Ken that he would have the words to say, that he would speak the truth in love, as he communicates the truth of God's handiwork in the created world. But also, be in prayer for Bill.
Because too often, we fall into this picture, this adversarial contest. And we do struggle. There is an adversary, but it's not a person. Because Bill Nye, the science guy, has had his understanding darkened.
That he is in spiritual bondage. A scripture tells us. So that he is blinded from the truth. So our desire should not be that Ken Ham wins the debate.
Our desire should be that Bill Nye comes to Jesus Christ. That is the ultimate goal. So be in prayer for Tuesday. If you would turn in your Bibles, please, to the Gospel of Mark, the Gospel of Mark.
This morning's message ties in well with the songs that we've sung this morning, especially the hymn, I must tell Jesus. I was reading an article this week that I'd read some months before. And the title of the article is, How to Raise Peggin' Children in a Christian Home, The How-To Guide. And the premise of the article is this, is that we, as the North American Evangelical Church, have made a success of raising peg and children in our Christian homes.
And what we have done is this. We have taken our children and said to them, love one another because the Bible tells you so. Be good because the Bible tells you so. Don't do that because the Bible tells you so.
And we fill our children's thoughts with good character traits, good moral lessons, and they grow up striving to be good citizens. Who will not do that because the Bible tells them so? Who will act this way because the Bible tells them so? And then one day, they encounter the sin that was not explicitly laid out.
Or the sin that they could fall into and still make all the externals look right. Or maybe they encounter the person who walks up to them and says, I act just like you do, except I don't believe you're God. I sat in church some months back. I invited a colleague from work who comes from the Hindu faith and he came to church.
And just so happened, the sermon being preached was on the evaluable for giving one another and how important it is to forgive one another. And at the end of the message, he turned to me and said, I was so glad I came this morning because I've often thought that Hinduism and Christianity are probably very much the same. And after hearing this message, we have the exact same truths in our writings. And it's like, that's not the reason I wanted you to come.
So praise the Lord. Other conversations opened up. But we do this. Because see, what we leave out, we say, be good because the Bible tells you so.
Except what the Bible says is God's standard is perfect goodness. And you will miss it every single time. It is impossible for you to be good. You need Jesus.
You need a relationship with him. And then you need to cling to him, hold onto him every moment, every second, every hour. You need to get up each day and say, God, it is absolutely impossible for me to do what the Bible tells me to do. Only you can do it in me.
And teach our children that and teach each other that. And remember that ourselves, that we are not good people. If we are in Christ, we are in new creation. But even Paul talks about the struggle.
Romans lays out the need to walk in the spirit. That was the pre-sermon sermon. Mark chapter 5, we're going to look at an account that is very familiar to you, starting in verse 21. But let's pray.
Now, Lord, in our God, we thank You this morning that You are the same in this moment as You have been for all eternity, that Your words are still true, that Your strength hasn't diminished, that Your holiness is unturnished, that You are perfect in all Your ways. Lord, we praise You, that You indeed are God and there is none like You. Lord, we praise You as we gather here, that You are still the God who redeems, through the power of the sacrifice of Your own Son and only His sacrifice. Lord, we praise You that whosoever will may come to Him.
Lord, we praise You that though we and ourselves can do no good thing in You, we are able. And we praise You for that. We praise You for Your body of the church, that we can be united through Your Spirit with You as the head. Lord, we praise You for Your Word that we look into today.
And Lord, we ask that Your Spirit would bring it to our understanding and would apply it to us. For Your glory in Jesus Christ, amen. Mark chapter five starting at 21. When Jesus had again crossed over by boat to the other side of the lake, a large crowd gathered around Him while He was by the lake.
Then one of the synagogue rulers named Gerias came there, seeing Jesus He fell at His feet and pleaded earnestly with Him. My little daughter is dying. Please come and put your hands on her so that she will be healed and live. So Jesus went with Him.
A large crowd followed and pressed around Him and a woman who was there who had been subject to bleeding for 12 years. She had suffered a great deal under the care of many doctors and had spent all she had and instead of getting better, she grew worse. When she heard about Jesus, she came up behind Him in the crowd and touched His cloak because she thought, if I just touch His clothes, I will be healed. Immediately her bleeding stopped and she felt in her body that she was freed from her suffering.
At once, Jesus realized that power had gone out of Him and He turned around in the crowd and asked, who touched my clothes? You see the people crowding around against you, the disciples answered, and yet you can ask, who touched me? But Jesus kept looking around to see who had done it. Then the woman knowing what had happened to her came and fell at His feet and trembling with fear told Him the whole truth.
He said to her, daughter, your faith has healed you. Go in peace and be freed from your suffering. We have this account, an account within an account, the story of Jesus as He's going to do a miracle for Jarius' daughter. Jesus is moving through the crowd.
There have been a number of miracles which He's performed. People are being drawn to Him in vast numbers. And as Jesus is traveling along, heading to Jarius' house, there is this woman in the crowd. This woman suffers from a physical disease probably related to a reproductive cycle.
Something is seriously wrong. For 12 years, she suffered with this. And as it says in Mark, not only has she suffered with her condition, she has also suffered at the hands of many doctors who each tried to do something to cure and each time not only didn't make it better but made it worse. Now there's a lot that's happening for this woman.
Things that we don't often think about until we take it through the context of the Jewish setting in which she lives. This woman suffers a bleeding disorder. Under the law, she is perpetually unclean, which means she is never able to participate in the activities and the festivals of the Jewish rights. Because of her discharge, she's continually unclean.
She's been unclean for 12 years, separated from being fully involved in the community of the Jewish faith. She has used every resource she possibly could have. She's gone to everyone who thought they could cure and nothing has come of it. She has been in agony.
And whether it's by simple human coincidence, of course there is no such thing, that she is there among the crowd, whether she has been seeking out Jesus, actively hunting him down. Should we come to this moment where in the midst of the crowd here is this woman and here is Jesus Christ. Now always when I read this story, I pictured her going up and coming up behind him, just grabbing onto the edge of his clothes and all of a sudden this miracle happens. And it wasn't until I was reading a study book by a Jewish believer that he pointed out some things that I had missed.
One of course, the condition of the woman what it meant for her in her relationship with the Jewish faith but something else. Scripture says that she came up to him and wanting to simply touch his clothes, she grabbed hold of not the hem of his garment, but the original language says she grabbed hold of the tassel on his garment. That's significant. She didn't grab onto the edge of his pocket.
She didn't grab onto the edge of his tunic. She grabbed onto the tassel on the corner of the cloak that he wore. He would turn to numbers, chapter 15. Numbers, chapter 15, starting at verse 37.
The Lord said to Moses, speak to the Israelites and say to them, throughout the generations to come, you are to make tassels on the corners of your garments with a blue cord on each tassel. You will have these tassels to look at so that you will remember all the commands of the Lord, that you may obey them and not prostitute yourselves by going after the lusts of your own hearts and eyes. Then you will remember to obey all my commands and will be consecrated to your God. I am the Lord your God who brought you out of Egypt to be your God.
I am the Lord your God. You see, every Jewish man and often women as well would affix on their cloak or shawl on the four corners a white tassel of cords with one blue cord woven among them. Jews still do this today. On every Jewish prayer shawl, the four corners have tassels.
I have one and I was gonna bring it in and show you in true male fashion. I asked my wife where it was this morning, and she pointed out that I'd used it in a play and it was in the bottom of the hamper. So it didn't come with me today. But they have these tassels.
Jewish youth actually make bracelets out of them so they can wear them as a reminder of the covenant they have with God. So now, picture, here is this woman in this state of utter distress. And she goes up to Jesus and she reaches out. All she wants to do is just one contact with him.
She grabs on to the tassel which represents the covenant that God has made with his people. And part of that covenant that God has made with his people, the overarching covenant God has made with his people is that a deliverer was going to come, the Messiah. The Jews of Jesus day would wear their cloaks over their shoulders and they actually referred to the side with the tassels hung down as the wings. They talked about how some rabbis had very large wings.
When early Jewish Christians read this account, they said she came up to him and she grabbed onto the tassel on the wings of his robe, on the wings of his cloak. I didn't think much of it, but the early Christians would look at that and said, it's a fulfillment of Malachi chapter four verse two. And the son of righteousness would come with healing in his wings. She came up and all she wanted was a moment to touch Jesus and she grabbed onto the covenant of God.
She came to the Messiah who came with healing in his wings. And in that moment she received deliverance. In that moment she received everything that she had ached for everything that no one else could give her. Jesus gave her in that moment because she was so turned to him.
There was nothing else. There was nothing else. There was only Jesus. There were no doctors.
There were no remedies. There was only Jesus. And so she grabbed onto him and instantly, immediately, she is healed of what has been separating her. She is instantly changed.
And then we have Jesus follow up, which is one of those things that is very much a God thing to do, right from the beginning, from the garden when God comes into the garden and asks, Adam, where are you? Of course, God knew where Adam was. God is omniscient. He knows all things.
He gave an opportunity for response. So Jesus turns around in the midst of this press of people and says, who touched me? In his divinity, he knew exactly who touched him. He knew her story.
But he was creating an opportunity for her to respond. And then of course, as we often see, we get the disciple response. You got to love the disciples because they're exactly like us. They're regular human beings.
Come on, you're in the midst of a crowd. Who touched you 15 people in the last 30 seconds, probably. But Jesus persists, kept looking around and the woman realizing both what has happened to her and realizing that now the one who is responsible is looking for her comes to him, falls at his feet, trembling with fear and told him the whole truth. She's probably wondering, you know, how do you respond to someone with so much power that I simply grab onto that tassel and I'm changed?
Maybe she's afraid that he's going to condemn her. Maybe she's afraid that something is going to be changed back or maybe she's just in absolute awe of what has just happened. But Jesus greets her. The daughter, your faith has healed you.
Go in peace and be freed from your suffering. He greets her with love, commends her for her faith. Her faith, I should add in him. That's another doctrine we have today.
We always tell people, have faith, have faith. Faith that is not connected to Christ is worthless faith. It's not about having faith. It's about who is the object of your faith.
The object of her faith was this man Jesus, the Messiah, the Son of God. And her faith in him had brought about transformation. Go in peace and be freed from your suffering. For her, it's dealing with the physical, for us.
This of course expands into the spiritual and eternal. Every person who has ever come to Christ has come to Christ recognizing that total inability to be anything without Christ. I came to Christ at six years old because I knew at that juncture in my life that I could not do what the Bible tells me so. People talk about not having a concept of total depravity.
I had it nailed at six. I knew that I couldn't do the things. My mom and dad and my Sunday school teacher said, this is what God expects of you. I knew I couldn't do it.
I knew I needed Jesus. And yes, I was one of those ones who had to make sure so I accepted Jesus on a regular basis. So someone explained to me that once was sufficient. But that, for each of us, we are like that woman.
There is nothing else that is gonna work and we reach out to Jesus. And we reach out to Jesus. We reach out to him in repentance, believing on his name. We accept the covenant of God.
When God says, I am the Lord, your God. Because when I believe in Jesus Christ, I believe in the Lord who sent him. And in that moment, when we come to Christ, we experience peace with God. And all that has bound us up, we are freed from.
Just as this woman was freed of her disease. See, we relate to the story very well. Sometimes we may not even realize how big it was when we came to Christ. Maybe it was just struggling in failure and sin.
We come to Christ and don't realize that we grabbed hold of the covenants of God. That now the commands of God are promises to us. They're not a measure of our sin because every command God gives can be fulfilled through Jesus Christ and we are free. The importance with this story, with this account, is in the end, it all centers on Jesus.
My encouragement to you is that we remember that it all centers on Jesus. Sometimes we make the mistake of we say, come to Christ. We're clear on that and now go live your life and do what the Bible tells you so. And so we try that and our adversary loves it.
I've shared before one of the things that breaks my heart most is being at youth events where someone will stand up and the youth will be there and it seems to particularly happen with youth, I guess, because adults just don't let them get away with it. But the speaker will stand up and talk about, look, you have failed, you've committed this sin, you've committed that sin, it's time for you to go up to the front and pledge to God that you will change your ways. And the front will be packed with weeping teenagers who are convicted of their sin and who are promising God that they will live differently. And they walk out the door and the adversary is just laughing because everyone walks out the door and I'm gonna try to live different, I'm gonna change this and I'm gonna do that and I'm gonna do I'm or they'll turn to other people and hey, here's a plan, I'll do this and I'll work on this and they fail.
I know a brother in the Lord, many of you know as well, he came to Christ, had an amazing transformation of what his life was before, to his life became through Christ but then immediately tried to do all the things like the Bible told him so. And he changed his hair, and he changed his clothes, he changed his habits and he put good Bible reading schedules and he did all these things and he sinned regularly, first secretly, then it became less secret. And then he pledged to do differently and he failed, then he pledged to act differently and he failed and then one day I remember he came to me and he said, Stephen, I want you to know that I'm not gonna be a Christian anymore. He said, because I can't do it.
He said, other people I guess can but I can't do it and I don't want to shame Jesus by saying I'm a Christian when I can't live this way. And he was heartbroken, leecenseer and so he walked away. Of course the beauty is you don't walk away from the God of the universe. Because the God of the universe grabbed hold of his life and flipped it upside down and bounced it this way and that way it did all these things and at the same time bringing people into his life who spoke about Jesus to him and then eventually he came back.
The difference from before is before he was trying to do what the Bible told him so and now he is utterly and totally dependent on Jesus Christ every moment of every day because he knows that outside of Christ he can't do what the Bible tells him so. So he still reads his Bible faithfully, he still acts modestly, he still has these things but he does it in dependence on God to do it and not at what he can do for God. See we're like that woman every day. As we sang this song, I must tell Jesus.
I must tell Jesus, especially that last verse, sins allure and it is. Anybody who says that sin isn't attractive, he isn't being honest because there's always an attractive sin. There's lots that you may be at a place in your Christian walk, you know that, there's no attraction to me at all, praise the Lord but then there'll be that one over there. Let's go back to that.
And we need to cry out to Jesus about that because he has the power to enable us to have victory and to succeed and we need that. It is my encouragement to you this week and the days to come, to cry out to Jesus. Ask him to show you in your life where have you been trying to do what the Bible tells you so? But in the strength of yourself and on the strength of the God of the universe.
Where have you been trying to be a good living moral citizen and not a totally consumed follower of Jesus Christ? Because Jesus Christ can make us totally consumed followers of Jesus Christ, only he can. We can make ourselves good moral citizens. As our morality in the world continues to spiral downward, it gets easier to look good and moral.
We also need to pray that the Lord will move us to want to which I appreciated our brother also shared. But sometimes we have to be honest, we don't want the spirit to take control of an area of our life. We like it the way it is. Yes, we as believers can like certain areas of sin.
Jesus said to one of the men that he was going to heal. He goes up to him and he asks him a question which seems and first reading to be ridiculous. He goes up to this man who suffered a great time and says, sir, do you want to be well? And we're thinking, he's all crippled up.
Of course he wants to be well, huh? Maybe he doesn't. Maybe at the moment he is attached to his infirmity. Sometimes we are attached to what is holding us back from God.
But we need to go and be honest with God and say, Lord, you need to convict me of this. He's at the moment I'm not. I know I should because the Bible tells me so, but I'm not. Or Lord, I should be doing this in my life.
I should be involved in this in my life, but I'm not. And I don't want to be. Jesus do it in me. So at each day we are the woman realizing we have nothing else but reaching out and grabbing on to Jesus because Jesus will deliver 24-7.
For he alone has the power and the glory. He alone has the ability to change human hearts. He alone has the strength to be victorious every time. He alone.
So hold on to the tassel. Clean to Jesus. Call out to him and see what he will do. For he has not failed yet and he will not fail now.
Let's pray. Dear Father, you know us inside and out. We have no secrets from you. You know our imaginations and our struggles, our fears and our failures.
You know when we think we're doing well and actually we're not and when we think we're failing, but you're actually doing a work in us. So Lord I pray that you would be at work in each person first that we would know you if we don't know Jesus Christ. And we'll bring us to that point where nothing else works and we just have to reach out to him and believe on his name. But Lord remind us of this every moment of every day, whether we've walked with you for five years or 50 years that we still need you.
It's still only possible with you. We need to cling to that tassel. We need to trust in the Son of righteousness. For he is our God.
Lord you need to do this in us. We won't do it in ourselves. But thank you that you are able. And Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen. Thank you. David wanted to come up. I just want to mention everybody because you may not know, but we've had the privilege of having Stephen with us for.
You're in half. You're in half, great. I'm older than you and I forgot. But I knew it was around that.
And you've actually walked on places on this carpet that I've never seen feet before, in other ways. But Stephen, this is his last night with us for a while because he is going to direct children's ministries at Stone Ridge. And I know Stephen has a great heart for children. And he has worked many years at camp.
In fact, that's where I first met Stephen before I ever came to Northbrook. I believe you burned your hand on a rock or something like that. And Stephen has, if Stephen could give up everything and go to camp and have camp 24-7, I think you would do that when you're because of the children. Children's ministry is so important.
I actually read this week. I just threw a little newsfeed that I'm on. It was an assembly in the United States, similar to us. And they have a Wednesday night, what we would call Rejoice Club.
Kids Club, they called it. And this little one that was there for many years, now in grade seven or grade eight, had come to Jesus Christ. And at the Rejoice Club, I called Rejoice Club because that's what I was just. And there was many, many, many, many, many, many, many responses after that of how great that was.
And I know that that's where Stephen's heart is, to see children come to Jesus Christ. With that said, I'd like to ask you a minute, if you would come up and to Michael's family, we'll go down here so you don't embarrass everybody. We just like to have a word prayer with you as you go out into this very important ministry. And you'll be effective as a family, and Stephen's work with the children, and pray for the children that you'll be ministering to.
So if we could have just a moment to have a word prayer with you down the front before you go.