I’m calling tonight’s class – The anatomy of Faith. We’re going to look a woman’s encounter with Jesus–her encounter with Sozo. Then we’ll break it down in light of what we’ve learned about faith.

Our encounter starts with a woman who had been living with a hemorrhage for twelve years. It’s a familiar story, but in it we’ll find a perfect example of how faith works. Before we start our faith forensics, let’s read the encounter. This particular story appears in three of the gospel accounts, Matthew 9, Mark 5, and Luke 8. We’re going to read all three tellings of the event since each one brings out different aspects of the encounter.

And a woman who had been suffering from a hemorrhage for twelve years, came up behind Him and touched the fringe of His cloak; for she was saying to herself, “If I only touch His garment, I will get well.” But Jesus turning and seeing her said, “Daughter, take courage; your faith has made you well.” At once the woman was made well. – Matthew 9:20-22 NASB

Matthew tells the story quickly and doesn’t really embellish it much.

We see her diagnosis.
We hear her internal dialog.
We see her act on her plan.
We hear the Master’s commendation.
Finally, we see her made well–Sozo’d. (I know it’s not a word–I’m making a point.)

Now let’s look at Luke’s account and start drawing out some details. He’s going to introduce some new information into our investigation.

And a woman who had a hemorrhage for twelve years, and could not be healed by anyone, came up behind Him and touched the fringe of His cloak, and immediately her hemorrhage stopped. And Jesus said, “Who is the one who touched Me?” And while they were all denying it, Peter said, “Master, the people are crowding and pressing in on You.” But Jesus said, “Someone did touch Me, for I was aware that power had gone out of Me.” When the woman saw that she had not escaped notice, she came trembling and fell down before Him, and declared in the presence of all the people the reason why she had touched Him, and how she had been immediately healed. And He said to her, “Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace.” – Luke 8:43-48 NASB

Luke doesn’t include her internal dialog.

We see in this account that this woman wasn’t just sitting in her hovel feeling sorry for herself. He points out that she could not be healed by anyone. Mark’s going say even more about this, so let’s come back to it.

The real gold in Luke’s account is that the healing actually preceeded Jesus’ reaction. She touched Him and she was healed before any interaction with Jesus. She “came up behind Him and touched His cloak,” and was completely healed before Jesus knew who touched Him.

She didn’t ask for it.
She didn’t pray for it.
She didn’t have any friends in the crowd to get her to Jesus.
She simply TOOK it.

She took it.

It was there and she knew it, so she reached out and took it for herself.

WOW

This is a big deal. This demonstrates a certain amount of guts and daring.

Once I know (really know) that something is intended for me, particularly a gift, freely offered, freely given, what do I do.

There’s a Bible word that we often get wrong, receive, and I don’t just mean we get the ‘i’ before the ‘e.’ Receive comes across as a passive verb, especially when we put it in context of gifts. For example:

You ask me where I got my ugly Christmas sweater, and I tell you that I received it from my grandmother who knitted it for me. In your mind’s eye, you see me sitting on a comfey love seat, and a blue-haired woman walking across to me and setting a gift box in my lap. I open it, hold it up, pull it on, and give her a hug.

That’s not the Bible word for receive.

(Disclaimer – as a rule I dislike sports metaphores, but today I make an exception.)

Once in a while, I’ll watch the highlight reels from football games. That guy who catches the ball when the quarterback throws it down field, what do you call him? The receiver! I love it when the receiver runs in a full sprint down feild, gets open and the QB let’s it rip. The receiver leaps into the air and grabs the spiralling projectile out of the air. But he’s not done yet. He yanks it out of the sky and instantly pulls it down and tucks it into his body and holds on with all his upper body strength, while simultaneously pushing his throttle to full-speed-ahead toward the goal.

That’s more like it. That’s more like the Bible word for receive. And that’s what our woman with the issue of blood has done. She pull the healing that God hurled into the world (“He sent His word and healed them,” Psalm 107:20) in to her body.

We read in Mark 11,

“Therefore I say to you, all things for which you pray and ask, believe that you have received them, and they will be granted you. – Mark 11:24 NASB

Let me paraphrase with a more active form of the word.

“Therefore I say to you, all things for which you pray and ask, believe that you have taken hold of them, and they will be granted you. – Mark 11:24 NASB

This is a really important piece of the puzzle. That which we hope to obtain by faith will not be dropped in our lap by a blue-haired granny. We must take hold. We must pull it out of the sky as it try to fly right by. We must pursue it, and take it with confidence and no regard for the obstacles in place before us. Faith is not passive. Faith takes hold of the promise without fear of reprisals. If God intended me to have healing, I’m taking it for myself, no matter what anyone else tries to tell me.

We know this is true about salvation. We know we have to go after salvation. Yes, it’s a free gift, but unlike my ugly Christmas sweater, no granny is dropping it in my lap. I have to get up, and take hold of it, and then I have to hold fast to it. If it’s true for salvation, it’s true healing. We’ve been seeing for weeks now how the two are linked and work exactly the same way.

Let’s just look at some scriptures to demonstrate this.

Fight the good fight of faith; take hold of the eternal life to which you were called, and you made the good confession in the presence of many witnesses. – 1 Timothy 6:12 NASB

Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for He who promised is faithful; – Hebrews 10:23 NASB

Quick note – the words above – “take hold,” in the First Timothy verse come from the same root in the Greek as receive in Mark 11:24.

You see, this is how the Christian life is supposed to work. We live by promises. We take hold of promises by faith. Remember, “Faith begins where the will of God is known.” The only place we can confidently find the will of God is in His word. His will is often given in the form of promises. These promises link us to His divine power. Check this out…

Grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord; seeing that His divine power has granted to us everything pertaining to life and godliness, through the true knowledge of Him who called us by His own glory and excellence. For by these He has granted to us His precious and magnificent promises, so that by them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world by lust. – 2 Peter 1:2-4 NASB

Let’s take a few minutes and break this down and perhaps after that we’ll stop for the evening.

Peter is telling us here that grace and peace come to us through the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord. Then he breaks it down for us.

God’s divine power has granted us… What’s a grant? The word is given, granted, bestowed. But you see it comes through the knowledge of God, not by osmosis. You don’t get this divine power, by sitting on the side line. It only comes through getting to know God, His Word, His Son, His Will. 

There are two types of knowing God talked about in the Bible. Psalm 103 talks about making His ways known to Moses and His acts to the children of Israel. In John 15 Jesus talks about it like this.

“No longer do I call you slaves, for the slave does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all things that I have heard from My Father I have made known to you. – John 15:15 NASB

The Song of Songs tells the story of a shulamite woman and her Shepherd King lover. It chronicles the story of their love from first sight to full partnership. 

Partnership – this is the knowing Peter is talking about where we become partakers of the divine nature, where our life is no longer based on our striving for survival, but God providing everything we need for life and godliness, and allowing to walk like Jesus walked.

Ok – I’m pretty deep down this rabbit hole now – let’s climb out and get back to our woman and her encounter with Jesus.

Luke also added the whole conversation where Jesus asked “who touched me.” Luke points out that they all (all must include the woman herself,) denied it. Peter pointed out that there was a crowd, just in case Jesus hadn’t noticed the throng pressing in on Him from every side.

We get this really intrieging bit about Jesus being aware that power had gone out of Him. When we read about the parylized man, we focused for a while on the fact that in the room where Jesus was teaching, the power of the Lord was preasent to heal. (Luke 5:17) Then we noticed that this healing power that Jesus carried was not accessible by any means but faith. Today we see this power again. 

Jesus is not preaching or teaching this time. He’s just walking. And yet, the healing power of God is still present, and He is aware of it. There is some part of Jesus that is aware of the power He carries. The woman taps this power, without Jesus’ prior knowledge, or concent. This is a bit wild to me. 

Jesus litterally carried power that was accessible by faith without Him doing anything more than being there.

This same power, this same anointing, He has passed on to His Church. Now we are His body. We are the ones wearing the clothes that could be, ought to be, conduits of His healing power, His Sozo power. When we walk in a room, the power of the Lord is present to heal. When we walk through a crowd, the power of the Lord could flow through our shadow into those in proximity. Turn to Acts 5 and let’s look at Peter again.

And all the more believers in the Lord, multitudes of men and women, were constantly added to their number, to such an extent that they even carried the sick out into the streets and laid them on cots and pallets, so that when Peter came by at least his shadow might fall on any one of them. Also the people from the cities in the vicinity of Jerusalem were coming together, bringing people who were sick or afflicted with unclean spirits, and they were all being healed. – Acts 5:14-16 NASB

We’ll pick it up the last account of the woman with the issue of blood again next week. I want to come back to this one main take away today. God’s healing power, carried by Jesus, didn’t need Jesus’ permission. There is a very simple reason for this. Healing is always God will for everyone now. Jesus wasn’t holding His healing power back from anyone.

Thanks for coming by.

See you again soon,

Ben