God's Last Words

A Bible Teaching

Mark 5: 25-34

Let’s talk theology this morning – if you want to amaze your friends with an interesting tidbit of Theology during your next discussion this message will help you out.

First, let me reinterpret the story of the Good Samaritan for 21^st Century Millennials:  A man was beaten up by robbers on the road. He lay on the side of the road, half dead. A republican came along, saw him and passed by on the other side. A democrat came by, blamed it on guns, and also crossed to the other side.

Finally, a progressive social justice warrior came along, looked at the man and said: "Whoever did this to you is a hater and needs to be re-educated, I’ll be bac k to organize a protest.”

Today I want to offer to you a teaching on salvation that has transcended time. From a practical theological perspective most of us are either what is called “Arminian” or “Calvinistic” about our own salvation.

If we are Arminian, we believe that God gave us free will, and it is through the exercise of that free will that we choose to be saved or not.

Calvin’s view was that God preselected or pre-destined some people for salvation and death and damnation for others, supposedly based on His foreknowledge of human choice.

The Reformed Church has always believed that it was the individual’s free and independent action to respond to the gift of God’s Grace that brings about reformation, regeneration, and eventual sanctification in the believer. In other words, total free will.

But Calvin thought that if you were elected to salvation by God then His grace would irresistible to you and you would become sanctified despite yourself. Thus you would be saved because you were always “pre-destined” to be saved. Circular logic, I guess.

To me it never made sense to say Jesus died for everyone and then say that only those God knows, through His omniscience, will be saved – it creates a drag on our ability to understanding free will, and pulls a veil over God’s love for some. It is just one of those mysteries of God that kind of doesn’t matter as long as people are saved.

Listen to our Gospel Lesson for today:

Now there was a woman who had been suffering from haemorrhages for twelve years. She had endured much under many physicians, and had spent all that she had; and she was no better, but rather grew worse. 

She had heard about Jesus, and came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak, for she said, ‘If I but touch his clothes, I will be made well.’

Immediately her haemorrhage stopped; and she felt in her body that she was healed of her disease. 

Immediately aware that power had gone forth from him, Jesus turned about in the crowd and said, ‘Who touched my clothes?’ And his disciples said to him, ‘You see the crowd pressing in on you; how can you say, “Who touched me?” ’ 

He looked all round to see who had done it. 

But the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came in fear and trembling, fell down before him, and told him the whole truth. He said to her, ‘Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace, and be healed of your disease.’

Note that this passage comes in the middle of the story of Jarius’ daughter and seems to catch Jesus unaware, or at worse, unprepared, but I hope not unamused. (Imagine Jesus whiling about in the crowd yelling, “Did you touch me, who touched me?”

It’s clear in this passage that not everything is predestined or preordained in Jesus’ ministry. The Holy Spirit is unrestrained to do its work in bringing people to Jesus.

It suggests that free will, the act of humans reaching out, or seeking out, will result in salvation just as easily as Jesus’ seeking out those He encounters in His ministry.

Jesus saves all who reach out to Him in reopentance, proclaim Him as God’s Son, and become His disciples. Our choice is independent of God’s Will for His creation, but He gladly includes us in it as His Children. Truly he favors both Jew and Gentile.

In the book Knowledge of the Holy, A.W. Tozer tries to explain the seemingly contradictory beliefs of God's sovereignty, that is, His total control, and man's free will:

"An ocean liner leaves New York bound for Liverpool. Its destination has been determined by proper authorities. Nothing can change it. This is at least a faint picture of sovereignty.

"On board the liner are hundreds of passengers. They are not in chains, neither are their activities predetermined for them by tickets or the ship’s staff.

They are completely free to move about as they will. They eat, sleep, play, lounge about on the deck, read, talk, altogether as they please; but all the while the great liner is carrying them steadily onward toward a predetermined port.

"Both freedom and sovereignty are present here, and they do not contradict. So it is, I believe, with man's freedom and the sovereignty of God. The mighty liner of God's sovereign design keeps its steady course over the sea of history." 

God has promised us a relationship throughout eternity and he will keep it. The world travels on regardless of what men do or not do. Listen to these scriptural promises:

Acts 4: 11-12 (HCSB) says:

“This ⌊Jesus⌋ is the stone rejected by you builders, which has become the cornerstone. There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to people, and we must be saved by it.”

Romans 1: 16-17 (HCSB) reports:

“For I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is God’s power for salvation to everyone who believes, first to the Jew, and also to the Greek. For in it God’s righteousness is revealed from faith to faith, just as it is written: The righteous will live by faith.”

And Ephesians 1: 13-14 (HCSB) records:

“When you heard the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and when you believed in Him, you were also sealed with the promised Holy Spirit. He is the down payment of our inheritance, for the redemption of the possession, to the praise of His glory.”

R. C. Sproul once preached:

“There are only two ways that God’s justice can be satisfied with respect to your sin. Either you satisfy it or Christ satisfies it. You can satisfy it by being banished from God’s presence forever. Or you can accept the satisfaction that Jesus Christ has made.” 

This is why we say that God’s grace, while available to all, has one catch – faith and profession of belief. God does 99.99% of the work while we have but to accept it.

The woman who reached out and touched Jesus received these words in reply:

He said to her, ‘Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace, and be healed of your disease.’ (Mark 5: 34).

If this woman had not reached out she may never have been healed. Jesus probably would have passed her by, but she had heard about Him and she reached out to Him. We need to do likewise. Amen.