DESPERATE PEOPLE DO DESPERATE THINGS (PART IV)

“Knees Bow in Jesus’s Name”

By Akin Ojumu

Apostate religious hierarchies, like all despots, seek to dominate. What power-hungry authoritarians have in common is their crave for absolute obedience and a hunger for total acquiescence on the part of those over whom they exercise control. It’s customary for them to lash out, often viciously, whenever their authority is questioned, or their opinion is challenged. Instinctively, they want to crush anyone they consider a threat to their influence and hold on power.

The Jewish religious leaders at the time of Jesus were no different. In their eyes, Jesus was a demon-possessed blasphemous rebel who constituted a threat to their hold over the people. So, they schemed to discredit Him, they set traps to catch Him, and eventually, they plotted to have Him killed.

Even though they were eyewitnesses to the extraordinary miracles Jesus performed, the Jewish religious establishment wouldn’t let the good Jesus was doing get in the way of their hatred for Him. The more the poor masses flocked to Jesus, and the more they saw Him as the Messiah, the stronger the resentment of the religious establishment for Him grew. Jesus’s growing popularity, in their view, constituted an erosion of their influence and a weakening of their dominance.

It is to this Jesus-hating religious hierarchy that Jairus belonged. As a leader of the Synagogue in Capernaum, he was a high-ranking member of the town’s religious establishment hostile to Jesus. By virtue of his prominent position in the religious hierarchy, Jairus must have been privy to all the schemes to slander the Lord Jesus. He was probably part of the conspiracy to test and trap Him. For all we know, he could have even led the plot to have Him murdered.

Then all of a sudden, Jairus’s twelve-year-old daughter became sick, even to the point of death. Desperate for help, it was to Jesus he turned. This prominent leader of the hostile religious establishment that had been trying to kill Jesus came running to Him when his own daughter faced an imminent death. When there was nowhere for him to go and no one else who could help, Jairus came and fell down at the feet of his enemy, pleading with Him to save his daughter.

Romans 5:10

“For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life.”

In demonstration of the surpassing greatness of His love and compassion, the Lord Jesus acquiesced to Jairus’s plea. He agreed to drop everything He was doing at once in order to go to the house of a man who had been conspiring with others to have Him killed. A merciful God showered his mercy on the undeserving. In exchange for hate, the Lord Jesus showed love. This is amazing grace on full display.

1 Peter 2:23

“When they heaped abuse on Him, He did not retaliate; when He suffered, He made no threats, but entrusted Himself to Him who judges justly.”

As the Lord Jesus made His way to Jairus’s house, into the scene came another desperate soul, in a similarly hopeless situation. Like Jairus, the woman with the issue of blood must have heard about miracles of Jesus. Stories of blind people receiving their sight, lame walking, and deaf and dumb talking, must have been the talk of the town.

She had tried all the conventional methods known to her. Not only did she not get better, but her situation deteriorated further. Worse still, she was also now bankrupt with nothing left. At her wits end, and with nothing else to lose, she decided to give Jesus, about whom she had heard so much, a try. In a last-ditch effort, she forced her way through the crowd that pressed around Jesus, an act that was in violation of the stipulations of the Mosaic Law that forbade her from coming in contact with anyone.

Repercussions be damned, the hemorrhagic woman violated the Mosaic Law. Determined to grab the fringes of Jesus’s garment, she elbowed her way through the massive crowd, rubbing herself against everyone, in the process defiling those around her and making them all ceremonially unclean.

At the very moment this desperate woman touched the hem of Jesus’ garment, time seemed to stand still. Healing power from the Great Physician poured through her body, bringing healing and restoration from the crown of her head to the soul of her feat. Every infirmity in the woman’s body was healed.

Mark 5:29

“And immediately the flow of blood dried up, and she felt in her body that she was healed of her disease.”

Glory be to God in the highest!!!

We’ll take it from here next time.