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After a long string of defeats, it’s easy to give up hope. You feel like you can’t win or experience anything good. You may have battled something within yourself, and you feel like you can never defeat it. You keep going back to the same sin and the same old pattern. You feel like you’ve tried everything, and you can’t move forward. You also can experience this in regards to others. You feel stuck in a relationship. You feel like nothing can change. You’ve tried everything, and nothing seems to work. So, you wait but without much hope.
In this passage, we have two examples of people who were tempted to give up hope. Then, they saw the power of Jesus. This gave them hope when others gave up hope, and they saw Jesus do an amazing work.
There are two histories intertwined here. The account begins and ends with the account of Jairus, a synagogue leader, and in the middle is the account of a woman with an issue of blood. We will deal with the woman first and then we will consider what happened when Jesus went to Jairus’ house.
The Woman with an Issue of Blood
Jesus triumphed over the demon army on the other side of the Sea of Galilee. The people, though, did not want him to stay, and so he returned to the Jewish side. There is a big contrast in this passage between the crowds who asked Jesus to leave in the previous story and the crowds on the other side of the Lake. “Now when Jesus returned, a crowd welcomed him, for they were all expecting him” (Luke 8:41).
In the midst of those crowds was a man named Jairus, a leader in the synagogues. This man came to Jesus and fell at his feet begging Jesus to come to his house. Have you ever experienced something that drove you to Jesus’ feet like that? What this man experienced is the sort of thing that would drive you to your knees. This man had one child, a daughter of 12 years old, and she was dying. Everyone expects that their children will outlive them, so the death of a child is always the hardest.
Jesus tried to leave, but the crowds were pressing in around Him and nearly crushed Him. There, in the midst of the crowd was a woman who had a gynecological condition. She had continued to bleed for twelve years. She had tried everything, and no one could heal her. This was a very difficult disease, but the situation was even worse. Women who experienced an issue of blood were considered ceremonially unclean. They had to remain separate from others so as not to make them unclean, and they could not enter the temple.
That’s what makes what happens even more striking. She came up behind Jesus and touched his cloak. Immediately, she was healed. She didn’t make Jesus unclean. Jesus made her clean. Jesus healed her.
Then, Jesus asked a very strange question. “Who touched me?” He was in the midst of a crowd, and people were pressing in all around Him. Jesus then clarified, “Someone touched me; I know that power has gone out from me” (Luke 8:46).