Going There

 

 

This is going to be about some female issues.  Most male teachers don’t go there, fully. 

Jesus did. 

Men should. 

It’s about all of us.

Isaiah 64:5-9  NIV 

5 You come to the help of those who gladly do right,

who remember your ways.

But when we continued to sin against them,

you were angry.

How then can we be saved?

6 All of us have become like one who is unclean,

and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags;

we all shrivel up like a leaf,

and like the wind our sins sweep us away.

7 No one calls on your name

or strives to lay hold of you;

for you have hidden your face from us

and have given us over to our sins.

8 Yet you, Lord, are our Father.

We are the clay, you are the potter;

we are all the work of your hand.

9 Do not be angry beyond measure, Lord;

do not remember our sins forever.

Oh, look on us, we pray,

for we are all your people.

 

This was a cry for help and acknowledgment of their plight.  They became like one who is unclean and that their righteous acts were like filthy rags.

 The word in Hebrew that was used for filthy is עִדִּים 

It is a noun feminine in Strong’s Concordance 5708 and is the root word which is עִדָּה noun feminine meaning: menstruation.

He is saying that their righteousness is like menstruation garments.  This is what is being translated in English as "filthy."

Blood is the life of our earthly existence.  A woman’s menstruation signified that life did not take place and the woman was considered unclean according to Leviticus 15, when she was having the flux of menstruation.  All who touched her, any of her garments or places she had been while she was in this time were considered also unclean and that which/who came in contact with her needed to be washed.

What a pain!  What a sense of humility and heaviness of soul to be called unclean.  Isaiah was writing that their righteous acts, in all their own efforts, were not only worthless, but unclean in the way of the flux of menstruation on garments.

Women know the inconvenience, the frequent pain associated, the tiredness, the ruined clothes, and the times of embarrassment.  My husband brought himself to purchase supplies for me for the first time at 28 years of marriage. It was embarrassing for him, too, but he did it out of love and compassion for me.

In walks Jesus. 

A woman, having an issue of blood for twelve years, hears that Jesus is in town. She’s heard about Him and the things He has done: raising the dead, healing the sick, freeing people of demons.

 She’s been considered unclean for 12 years. 

Years of embarrassment, feeling sick, tired, and chronic blood loss; she was desperate. She would have had to live mostly isolated.  She had sought help from physicians and in Mark 5:26 says, “and who had suffered much under many physicians, and had spent all that she had, and was no better but rather grew worse.”

One can scarcely comprehend what kinds of atrocities they were in those days that were done to her when it says she had suffered much under the attempts of many physicians. Her complete desperation brought her to Jesus.

Mark 5:26-27 She had heard the reports about Jesus and came up behind him in the crowd and touched his garment. 28For she said, “If I touch even his garments, I will be made well.”

If she touched just his clothes, His garments, she knew she would be made well.  In her unclean status, while wearing her unclean garments, she knew and believed the power of Jesus by touching just His garments.  She would strive to lay hold of Him.

Mark 5:29 And immediately the flow of blood dried up, and she felt in her body that she was healed of her disease. 30 And Jesus, perceiving in himself that power had gone out from him, immediately turned about in the crowd and said, “Who touched my garments?” 31 And his disciples said to him, “You see the crowd pressing around you, and yet you say, ‘Who touched me?’” 32 And he looked around to see who had done it. 33 But the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came in fear and trembling and fell down before him and told him the whole truth.

She confessed all of it.  All of what she had, in its embarrassment, and all of what she did.  Beyond the healing, she had touched Him in her “unclean” state.  She touched Jesus, who is pure and Holy, a Jew that fulfilled the Law, and in His power and purity she was healed by just His garments.  By His robe, she was made clean and healed.  He did not condemn her being unclean, or for touching Him and taking His power, but He responded toward her faith.

34 “And he said to her, “Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace, and be healed of your disease.”

“Go in peace,” He says to her.  No condemnation, no fear for what she had done, no more disease.  Jesus poured out His grace on top of His healing power.  He does this for us all.  Male and female.  He did not go and cleanse Himself, but immediately went to raise a dead child to life. 

Just as Isaiah wrote in that time that, “all of our righteous deeds are like filthy rags,”

 Jesus displays His time of grace in faith, revealing that our filthy rags are not held against us, but it is about Who He is and who we are to Him.

 Isaiah pleads in prayer in Isaiah 64:9

Do not be angry beyond measure, Lord;

do not remember our sins forever.

Oh, look on us, we pray,

for we are all your people.

As Jesus looked on the woman, He was not angry. He thought nothing of what she had done in her unclean state to touch His garments and receive His power. 

He wanted to know “Who.”

She received. She was healed. She was told to, “go in peace,” because of His grace.  Because of her faith, she received His healing power.

 Who she was, mattered to Him.