Sermon Tone Analysis

By Pastor Glenn Pease

One of the great stories of Greek Mythology is that of Antaeus and Hercules.

Antaeus, like Hercules, was of gigantic stature and marvelous strength.

His parents were Neptune and Terra-ocean and earth.

When he and Hercules engaged in mortal combat, Hercules proved to be the strongest, but every time he had Antaeus exhausted and point of defeat his flesh would touch Mother Earth, and his strength was mysteriously renewed, and he resumed the conflict with fresh vigor.

Hercules finally slew the mighty Antaeus by performing the titanic feet of lifting him into the air where he was out of touch with the earth.

The Greeks were saying by this legend that there is great power in touch.

The earth was the source of life for Antaeus, and when he could not keep in touch with his source of life he lost his power, and, therefore, lost his life.

Though it is a myth, the truth it teaches is a fact.

Direct contact with the source of life, with the palpitating heart of things, revitalizes you and rejuvenates the flow of energy.

The people who are really enthused and alive on any issue are those who are in touch with the heart of the issue.

On the other hand, if you are out of touch and have no contact, but are on the fringe of things, you are like a branch cut off the vine, and you will wither and waste away.

All of nature is a witness to the power of touch.

If the plant world is not kept in touch with mother earth, no life can exist.

It is the tree whose hungry mouth is pressed against the earth's sweet flowing breast that cause the poet to say, "Poems are made by fools like me, but only God can make a tree."

God makes a tree and all the fruits of trees through the power of touch.

Jesus used this fact of nature to illustrate the necessity for contact in the Christian life.

In John 15:4-5 he said, "Abide in me and I in you.

As the branch cannot bare fruit of itself except it abide in the vine; no more can you, except you abide in me.

I am the vine, you are the branches.

He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringth forth much fruit, for without me you can do nothing."

Jesus is clearly saying, out of touch is out of power.

The power of life is found only by maintaining contact with the source of power.

Get out of touch with Christ, and you are like Antaeus up in the air cut off from mother earth; weak and helpless and doomed to defeat.

The truth we are dealing with here is not an isolated incidental fact of life.

It is a universal truth with infinite significance.

The power of touch must be taken seriously in all realms of life.

Science is all based on the principle of the necessity of touch.

How many times have you wondered why your tape recorder, or some other electrical appliance, has stopped working, only to discover that the problem was a loose connection somewhere?

Something was not touching and there was no contact being made, and all electric power depends upon contact.

Break the current of contact and you lose your power.

It is just a fact of life in the realm of science as well as in nature.

No touch means no power.

History also bears witness to the power of touch.

When the church began it was in constant contact with the common people.

The common people heard Jesus gladly, and when the Apostles took over the leadership they were always among the masses.

For several centuries the church was active in the market place.

It kept its finger on the heart beat of people's lives where they were living, and the result of this keeping in touch with people was power and growth.

Then came the age of the monastery.

The church withdrew from the world.

It isolated itself behind walls, and broke contact with the masses.

The result was a thousand years of sitting in the dark.

It is called the dark ages because the power of the light house was gone.

It was gone for the same reason your house goes dark if you take your fuses out and pack them away in a box in the attic.

They must be put in contact with the flow of energy to bring light to your house.

So the church had to be in touch with the world if it was going to be the light of the world.

The circuit must be complete.

Jesus could only reconcile God and man, and be the mediator between God and man, because He was equally in touch with both God and man.

The church cannot be an agent of reconciliation unless it is in touch with both God and man.

History proves that being out of touch is being out of power.

In our individual lives we will degenerate, vegetate, and stagnate if we lose touch with people.

Lukewarm leftovers are dishes in which the devil delights, and they will be the menu we offer a starving world if we do not keep in touch with our Lord, the source of our life and power, and the world which desperately needs the fruit that His power can provide.

Our text is just one of many Biblical examples of the power of touch.

I chose it because it is recorded in all three of the synoptic Gospels, and the word touched is used in this account more than anywhere in the New Testament.

11 out of the 32 uses in the New Testament are found in the three recordings of this healing miracle.

As we examine the power of touch in the life of this one woman we will see how essential it is for all of our lives.

The first thing we see is-

I.

A TOUCH REVIVED HER HOPE.

The context shows that this woman interrupted Jesus as He was on His way to restore to life the daughter of Jairus.

Verse 42 tells us the girl was 12 years old.

From the time of that girls birth to the moment Jesus headed to restore her this woman had been plagued with a flow of blood.

For 12 long years she had endured the shame of her problem.

For the same 12 years that Jairus enjoyed the sunshine of a healthy little girl, she endured the gloom of her illness.

Such a flow of blood would exclude her from the women's court in the temple, and from the synagogue.

She was not much better off than a leper, for she would be ostracized, and if she was married she would likely have been divorced and sent away on her own.

Persons in such predicaments as her are willing to try anything for a cure, and so according to Mark she spent everything she had on the doctors of her day.

Dr. Luke does not tell us this interesting detail, and I suppose for good reason, for it would have been unethical for him to write of his fellow physicians in this negative way.

It is understandable, and so no one can complain if doctors do not have a cure for your problem, but when they make your problem worse by using you as a guinea pig, there is room for complaint.

That is what happened to this woman.

Christian tradition calls her Bernice.

In verse 26 Mark calls her broke.

If she was broke but better she would be a happy woman, but she was broke and worse than she was before she went to the doctors.

In the Catholic Bible there is the book of Tobit, and in 2:10 we read of a similar problem he had with the doctors of Biblical days.

He writes, "I use to go to the physicians to be healed, and the more they anointed me with their medicines, the more my eyes were blinded by the films, until they were totally blinded."

I don't know if Bernice had the same doctor as Tobit, but their treatment had the same effect, for it made the patient worse instead of better.

With her health gone, and now her wealth, she was at the end of her rope.

Where could she turn now, for she had nothing to pay even if she found someone with a cure.

She must have been in a pit of hopelessness, but then all is changed, for verse 27 says she heard the reports about Jesus.

What reports?

Why the reports that He could heal with a touch.

He didn't use any medicine or costly herbs.

A touch from the Great Physician is all it took to heal.

She had heard that His touch even healed the hopeless, and He would bid them to come to Him.

When other helpers fail and comforts flee,

Help of the helpless, O abide with me.

This was the cry of her heart as she heard these reports, and the possibility of being healed by a touch revived her hope.

She was so convinced of the power of touch that she says to herself in verse 28, "If I can touch even the hem of His garment I shall be made well."

What a powerful conviction for a woman who has spent 12 years fighting a losing battle.

Now she has the hope of being made well by a mere touch.

As we read on we see that, not only did a touch revive her hope, but secondly,

II.

A TOUCH RESTORED HER HEALTH.

Verse 29 says, " And immediately the hemorrhage ceased and she felt healed."

12 years of futile treatment, and now it is all over by the power of a touch.

Touching Christ, or being touched by Christ, is like making contact with a live wire.

There is an immediate effect.

It is like hitting a switch and having immediate light in place of darkness.

In Matt.

8 we read of a leper who came to Jesus for help, and verse 3 says, "And He stretched out His hand and touched him."