Alexander Moody Stuart
Mark 5:25-34. And a certain woman, which had an issue of blood twelve years, and had suffered many things of many physicians, and had spent all that she had, and was nothing bettered, but rather grew worse, when she had heard of Jesus, came in the press behind, and touched His garment. For she said, If I may touch but His clothes, I shall be whole. . . .
3. Healed at Once
1. Her coming to be healed was late and yet immediate
Her coming to be healed was late and yet immediate: late in reference to the past, immediate in the haste of this afternoon. “When she heard of Jesus [she] came”; yet this could not well have been the first time she heard of Jesus; not only had all the town already been filled with the praise of His works, but all Galilee and Judea. But the name of Jesus struck her ear and her heart now for the first time, as having some interest or hope for her.
So it constantly is when a sinner feels himself lost; he is ready to give up all; but the tidings of salvation sound in his ear for the first time, as having something to do with himself. They come to him full of promise and life. Long before this, the whole city had brought their sick to Christ, and He had healed all that were brought. But she was not dying, when kind friends might carry her to the good Physician; and it never occurred to herself that her case was one for His help. But hearing now that Jesus was passing through the street, from the feast in Matthew’s house to the sickroom of the ruler’s daughter, she lost no time in trying to overtake Him.
The act of her coming was good, but the reason was humbling: she came hastily to Jesus now, but it was because she had spent her all. She did not think of Christ first, but last. Physician after physician she had tried, but the thought of Jesus never occurred to her, as one able to relieve. She asked for advice and followed it, till it ran its course and left her no better; then she tried another and another, with the like result; she was hewing out for herself cisterns, which when hewn could hold no water. Fee after fee she paid, giving her money for that which was not bread, while her resources dwindled steadily away till at last she found herself a pauper, with all her living spent.
She did not have half a shekel of silver remaining to pay another physician, or else she would not have thought of Jesus; seemingly she did not have even a few pence left to buy bread, and she had no strength to work for it. Yesterday she had spent her last; today she had nothing, and it was drawing toward evening. And now she began to think that Jesus could help her. What an honour to pay to Him! He will charge her nothing for advice and aid, or for present health and eternal salvation.
This is exactly what every sinner does; no son of man comes to Christ first, but always last and after every other refuge has failed. The sinner stands with his back to the living waters, laboriously hewing cistern after cistern. Only when he finds them all dry does he turn and stoop to drink of the free and flowing fountain. The prodigal son has no thought of his father’s house till he is perishing for hunger; when the choice is between his father and death, he counts death still worse than his father’s house and he will now go home. Death is worst of all; his father’s roof only second worst. And this is all the honour that any of us at first render to God, to Christ and to heaven. Earth, self, an imagined righteousness, the pleasures of sin, the creature above the Creator: these are our own heart’s choice. At length, when we come to see nothing before us but death, judgement and woe, we flee to Christ as less terrible than death, and we think of heaven as not so intolerable as hell.
But though it begins thus, it never ends there. The lack of bread drives the prodigal home but, when once his thoughts return home, there is found in him by grace the true heart of a son; there springs up within him a sincere longing, repenting and yearning toward his offended Father. So in this impoverished patient, though Christ had been her last thought, He was highly exalted now; He was first, greatest, all. She desired no counsel now from vain physicians. If she had thousands of gold and silver, she would leave all for Jesus. The hem of His garment was more to her than all the physicians and all the medicines in the world. Believing Christ was precious to her, not because she had touched and been healed; but before she touched, and because she believed Him to be full of health for every coming sufferer. Poor dying soul, Jesus is the same yesterday, today and for ever; and as He was then to her, so is He now for you in your need.
2. Her cure was immediate, complete, conscious.
Her cure was immediate, complete, conscious. At once the fountain of her blood was dried up, and she felt in her body that she was healed of that plague. The root of the disease was reached and instantly removed; in a moment the spring of health and youth rose fresh within the inner depths of her frame; she was healed, and she felt and knew that she was well. She needed no experience to prove it; no trial, for she could walk erect and with elastic step; she needed no bread set before her to test her appetite; no work to show her strength. Others would look at those evidences, and they would come to herself in due time and be highly prized as daily proofs that she was the subject of no delusion. But meanwhile, independently of all the future, she knew for herself, because she felt within herself that she was well – not dying now but living, not weak but strong, and not through any mere outward cleansing, but with a true healing in the inner springs of life.
Thus it is with the immortal soul. The heart believes in Jesus Christ unto salvation; the conscience in that hour is cleansed and has peace with God; the soul is healed, is newborn, lives and is strong with everlasting youth and health. Eternal life has begun within the man; the life lost in Adam and corrupted from the womb is more than restored; it is renewed in Christ Jesus unto life more abundant. Did this poor woman feel within herself that she was cured of her bodily plague, and should the renewed man be all unconscious of his spiritual health and cure? Did her soul know the change that had taken place in the dull unconscious body, and should our soul not more know the everlasting change which by grace has taken place within itself?
3. But she cannot depart in health without confessing Christ the Healer.
But she cannot depart in health without confessing Christ the Healer. Public confession has been her great cross; the fear of it had nearly become a great snare; and a little more might have kept her back altogether. Yet ashamed, timid and retiring as she was, she faced a crowd for deliverance and she found it – not for the body alone, but still more for the soul. “Thy faith hath made thee whole”; “Thy faith hath saved thee; go in peace.” Here is a double deliverance; health of spirit and of body, temporal and eternal. But the Healer must be publicly acknowledged, and the need of health openly confessed.
Jesus not only allowed but commended her coming unseasonably; in the parable of the friend at midnight, He encouraged and enforced it. Her coming stealthily He allowed and pardoned, but corrected. He did not refuse her on that account, because He casts out none that come in any way; and He therefore let her come in this way, or in any other way that anyone might choose to take. But having let her come thus, he did not thus let her go. If she was to go in peace, with everlasting health for her soul, and with a root of health for the body that will spring up again from the grave, she must not go ashamed of Christ and ashamed of her need of Christ. With the heart man believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation; heart belief was in her, and her mouth must now make confession.
It was a much more public and detailed confession now than it might have been, had she come owning her sickness at first. She might thus have obtained health, with perhaps no more publicity than in other cases of which we have no special record – passing as one among many. But now she was singled out by herself and had to detail all her history before all the people. In coming to Christ at all, there is often the taking up of the cross and, in her case, it would have been a heavy cross to come openly. But Jesus did not say, He that cometh to Me must take up his cross, but “him that cometh to Me I will in no wise cast out”. But then He proclaims, “If any man will come after Me, let him . . . take up his cross and follow Me”. The comers need not bear the cross of Christ – he may or he may not – but every follower must. So with her: Jesus does not put the cross upon her before she comes, but He lays it on her expressly before she departs, for without it she cannot follow Him, and no one can. We must all bear the cross now, if we would wear the crown hereafter.
Yet the cross is far lighter to bear afterwards than it would have been before. She was burdened beneath a heavy weight that crushed her to the earth; and Jesus would not lay an added load of public shame upon a back so unequal to bearing it. But now she was relieved; her soul was forgiven, accepted and renewed; her bodily frame was strong and well. Full of joy and health, she can lift the cross that she had shunned; it was now the only load she had to carry; Jesus gently lays upon her His yoke, which is easy; and His burden, which is light. For the moment she trembled and was ashamed in narrating all her long and hopeless malady; yet even then, fallen on the ground, she could declare before all how the plague had been removed, and how sound and whole she had become. Even already her cross had become her crown, herself healed, rejoicing in the Lord’s great goodness and remembering her sorrow no more, because of her joy in the great salvation and in God her Saviour.
Her soul has mingled with the spirits of the just made perfect, and her body has mingled with the dust of the earth till the resurrection. But one of the everlasting memorials in heaven, of the Lord’s works on earth, will be the resurrection unto life of this woman, who had suffered in vain so many things from many physicians and was healed in a moment by the good Physician, through her believing touch of the hem of His garment: May we too be partakers of a living faith, so that we may share with her in that blessed rising from the dead, when this mortal shall put on immortality, and this corruptible shall put on incorruption, and death shall be swallowed up by life.