Title: The Beginning of Faith
Contents
▒▒▒ Mark 5:25~34
The main theme of Mark 5:21-43 is the healing of the daughter of Jairus, the ruler of the synagogue. Interrupted in the subject is the story of a woman who has suffered from a hemorrhage for twelve years. However, we remember the second story, the story of a woman with a hemorrhage, more than the first, which is the central theme. Not only that, but the second story touches us even more.
This woman is an unknown woman, as if her name has not been revealed. The question here is whether this woman knew that Jesus was the Son of God and the Messiah. The nature of the crowds who followed Jesus at that time can be divided into two. One group was a group that saw Jesus as a special person when they saw the miracles He performed. They were people who thought of Jesus as a person who could liberate Israel from the Roman oppression and establish the splendid Davidic kingdom again. The other group is a minority group, who have failed in the world. The woman with the hemorrhage was one of the latter of the two groups. She did everything she could to heal her illness, but she couldn't, so she wanted to be healed through Jesus. Jesus reflected on the woman was a man with magical powers. So he just went quietly and grabbed Jesus' robe, hoping that the magic power of Jesus would be transmitted to him and his illness would be healed. The woman's only wish was for her to be healed.
In the Bible, there is no trace of the woman's confession, "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God." No matter how much I searched the Bible, I could not find a verse that said the woman believed in Jesus as the Savior. We can't help but be amazed that Jesus healed this woman even though the woman thought she was a magician and caught Jesus. Jesus didn't care what the woman had in mind when she came to Jesus. He received this woman who came to him because he desperately needed Jesus' help and went out to heal him. The core of the text is that Jesus valued a woman beyond all that and healed her. We notice an important fact here. We have the idea that God loves us who implicitly believe in Jesus, but God punishes those who do not believe in Jesus. But through the text, God not only loves us who believe, but also loves and values many people who do not know Jesus.
The beginning of your faith does not mean that you memorize the Ten Commandments and all the Apostles' Creeds. If you have an earnest heart for Jesus, that is the beginning of your faith. What many people mistakenly think is that they do not have the heart to seek Jesus earnestly because they think they are pastors, elders, and priests. When we worship with the earnest heart that “I cannot live without the help of Jesus,” the mystery of the cross will come upon us and the blessings of the cross will come upon us.
2008-09-06 16:15:24