The First Sunday after Trinity is June 11, 2023.

In the Catholic Church, as well as in some Lutheran and Anglican congregations, this day is also known as Corpus Christi Sunday (more at the link, emphases mine):

Corpus Christi means ‘Body of Christ’ in Latin. The feast dates back to the Middle Ages and became a mandatory feast in 1312. It parallels the Last Supper on Maundy (Holy) Thursday, but is a more joyous celebration and one of thanksgiving, as Christ’s prophecies of His death, resurrection and ascension into Heaven have been fulfilled. He also sent the Holy Spirit to His disciples and the Holy Trinity was revealed to mankind — all as He promised.

Readings for Year A can be found here.

Today’s Gospel is the second option in the readings:

Matthew 9:9-13, 18-26

9:9 As Jesus was walking along, he saw a man called Matthew sitting at the tax booth; and he said to him, “Follow me.” And he got up and followed him.

9:10 And as he sat at dinner in the house, many tax collectors and sinners came and were sitting with him and his disciples.

9:11 When the Pharisees saw this, they said to his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?”

9:12 But when he heard this, he said, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick.

9:13 Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have come to call not the righteous but sinners.”

9:18 While he was saying these things to them, suddenly a leader of the synagogue came in and knelt before him, saying, “My daughter has just died; but come and lay your hand on her, and she will live.”

9:19 And Jesus got up and followed him, with his disciples.

9:20 Then suddenly a woman who had been suffering from hemorrhages for twelve years came up behind him and touched the fringe of his cloak,

9:21 for she said to herself, “If I only touch his cloak, I will be made well.”

9:22 Jesus turned, and seeing her he said, “Take heart, daughter; your faith has made you well.” and instantly the woman was made well.

9:23 When Jesus came to the leader’s house and saw the flute players and the crowd making a commotion,

9:24 he said, “Go away; for the girl is not dead but sleeping.” And they laughed at him.

9:25 But when the crowd had been put outside, he went in and took her by the hand, and the girl got up.

9:26 And the report of this spread throughout that district.

Commentary comes from Matthew Henry and John MacArthur.

St Matthew’s Gospel is meant to show that Jesus is the Messiah, as John MacArthur explains:

Now, let me set the context for you as we approach this passage. Matthew is presenting the messiahship or Christ. And He’s trying to prove it every way possible. And in chapter 8 and 9, he verifies the messiahship, lordship of Christ, the saviorhood of Christ, the deity of Christ, the reality that He’s the Son of God, the Messiah. He tries to verify it here marvelously by the miracles that Jesus did. And they are not random miracles; they are categorically selected to show the range of Messiah’s credentials and how they fulfill all the Old Testament expectations.

In the midst of these miracles, Jesus saw a man named Matthew sitting at the tax collection booth; He said, ‘Follow me’, and Matthew got up and followed Him (verse 9).

Our commentators say that there is more to Matthew’s story than that. MacArthur points out that Matthew would have known about Jesus and perhaps hoped that, realising his sins, he would be called:

Julius Schniewind has made a tremendous statement. He says this, “This then is conversion: to accept the death sentence and then the acquittal of God.” What a great statement, “To accept the death sentence and then the acquittal of God.” We have to accept the death sentence, first. Jesus came to expose us as sinners. That’s why His message was so penetrating, so forceful, why it tore off the self-righteousness of men and exposed their evil hearts. That was necessary, that they might see themselves as sinners. You’ll never win a relative to Christ, a friend to Christ, a neighbor or anyone else until they know they need Him …

Get the picture: Jesus has been teaching, verses 1 to 8. In probably Peter’s house in Capernaum by the seashore, the meeting is over. The paralytic is healed; he’s gone home with his four friends. Jesus goes out the door; the meeting is dismissed in that house. But typically, Jesus leaves. And the other writers – Mark 2, Luke 5 – describe it for us. He walks along the shore, the northern edge of the lake of Galilee. And following are His disciples, the ones at least that have been called. And behind, the multitude. They never left Him. They were astonished. They were fascinated. They were amazed. The meeting may have been over in the house, but they followed Him.

And He’s walking along the shore with this mass of people around Him. And at that point we come to verse 9. “And as Jesus passed forth from there” – that is from the house, walking along the shores – “He saw a man named Matthew.” By the way, in the other Gospel he’s called Levi. It’s not uncommon for a man to have two names. Thomas was called Didymus. Bartholomew had another name. It may have been like Simon Peter, that he was Simon, but the Lord gave him Peter. And he may have been Levi, and the Lord gave him Matthew because Matthew means “gift of Jehovah.” We really don’t know that, but it’s not uncommon to have two names. So, Levi and Matthew was the same person. But He sees him sitting at the tax office and said unto him, “Follow Me,” and he rose and followed Him.

Now, if you don’t know anything about Matthew, you’re going to learn in this message this morning that Matthew was a modest man. He was truly humble. He reduces his whole conversion to one verse and says absolutely nothing about himself. But he has something very potent in mind. Now, listen to this. The first part of the text shows Jesus receiving the sinner.

And the question comes, “Oh, yes, He healed the paralytic, and He forgave all his sins, but just how far does this forgiveness go? I mean what kind of people can Jesus really forgive?”

And so, Matthew says, in effect, in verse 9, “He forgave me.”

You say, “Is that significant?”

Yeah, it is. You want to hear something that might shock you? Matthew was categorically the vilest person in Capernaum. That’s right. By all the evaluation of the time, Matthew was the most wretched sinner in town. That’s why he uses himself as an illustration. How far does this forgiveness business go? It goes to the extremity.

Matthew calls himself here what Paul tried to take as his title, the chief of sinners.

You say, “Well, now wait a minute, MacArthur. I don’t see that in that verse. It just says He saw a man named Matthew.”

Oh, yeah, but you got to know about him. It tells you a little bit. It says he was sitting at a tax office.

MacArthur gives us the history of tax collectors in our Lord’s era. When the Romans took over, they allowed local men to start tax franchises. They could work solo or oversee a team of lesser tax collectors. Rome took its cut, and the tax collectors could take the rest. As a result, the tax collectors could charge much more in taxes than they should have done. Rome didn’t mind, as long as it got its share of tax.

A Jewish tax collector was seen popularly as being in league with the enemy, Rome. Furthermore, tax collectors were seen as being morally derelict. As such, they could not worship at synagogue. They could associate only with others viewed as morally derelict. But at least they had their money, right? (Irony alert.)

MacArthur explains the various taxes and types of tax collectors as Alfred Edersheim, a learned Jewish historian, described them:

You were listed” – get this – “in a list with unclean beasts out of the Old Testament. You were like a swine. They were forbidden to be a witness in any court of law because they could not be believed. They were known as flagrant liars. They wouldn’t even allow their testimony. They were classified with robbers and murderers.”

Well, I was so fascinated by this that I continued to read in Edersheim – and by the way, he’s a classic Jewish writer on the times with historical insight – and I found that not only that, but it goes a step further, and this is most fascinating. That’s just the tax collectors in general. But of those, there were two categories.

“Category number one,” says Edersheim, “were the general tax collectors, and their job was to take the regular taxes. And there were three of them. There was the land tax or the ground tax. That’s like property tax. There was the income tax. And then there was the poll tax. Just a registration tax.”

In other words, if you’re alive, you got to pay tax for being alive. If you’re dead, you don’t have to pay. So, you had this poll tax; you had this income tax and land tax. Land tax, one-tenth of your grain, one-fifth of our fruit and wine. Income tax, one percent of your money earned. And the poll tax was a determined figure that varied.

Now, the general tax collector took that. Their title in the Hebrew was gabbai G-A-B-B-A-I. Interesting, huh? That’s what you think today when you send in your tax. Goodbye. So, you won’t forget that term. But the general tax collector was the gabbai, and his job was simply to take those basic, regular taxes, and then he would add surcharges onto that to make his own fortune. But there was another kind of tax collector. This one dealt in the taxes that were other than these very stationary taxes. His job was to collect duty on everything else.

Now, we have the same thing in our society. We have certain land – property tax. We have income tax and things like that. And then we’ve got all the other taxes. Taxes on what you buy, on the food you eat. Taxes you pay every time you fly on an airplane. Taxes that airplanes pay when they land at an airport. Boat taxes. I mean there are taxes on axles on trucks and wheels on trucks and – you know, all of these road taxes, tolls you pay to go across a bridge, whatever, whatever, whatever. Now, that comes under the second category.

Now, these duties were given to a different man who was called a mokhes, M-O-K-H-E-S. He was able to collect tax on all import, all export, everything bought, everything sold, every road, every bridge, every harbor, every town, every everything. And Edersheim says they could invent taxes on anything they wanted. They could put taxes on axles. The more axles you had, the more taxes you paid – cart axles. Taxes on your wheels. The more wheels you had, if you had a two-wheeled cart, it was cheaper to transport than a four-wheeled car. Pack animals. A three-legged burro was cheaper than a four-legged burro. Slower, but cheaper. Pedestrian taxes. It cost you money to cross a certain road, to cross a certain bridge. Highway taxes, road taxes.

Market taxes. If you wanted to have your little business in the marketplace, you paid the mokhes a tax. Taxes on your ship, your boat, the dock. The fish you caught. They would open every package coming along the road. And they had the right to open every private letter to see if there was a business going on in that letter, they could attach a tax to that. Unlimited.

The gabbai were despised. The mokhes were more despised. They were unlimited in the abuses. They were oppressive, and they were unjust. And Edersheim says they were the ones who sat at the conflux of the roads where Matthew is sitting.

Now, Matthew would have been sitting by the north port of the sea of Galilee, and there probably was collecting taxes on all of that which was going on, on the lake, of industry: fishing and whatever else. He would have been in the strategic point also on the road from Damascus and the orient to the west so that he probably taxed everybody going by east and west. So, he had one of the really wealthy tax franchises that the Romans had let out.

Now, he wasn’t a gabbai; he was a mokhes. He was the more hated of the two, oppressive and unjust. Extortive, robbing people, taxing for everything and having the Romans behind him so that the intimidation and the threat was there.

Edersheim even goes on to say this, and this is most interesting. Of the mokhes, there were two kinds. Two kinds. The first were called the great mokhes. They were the ones who hired somebody to sit at the table and stayed behind the scenes, because they wanted to kind of keep their hands clean on the outside. They wanted to sort of have a good reputation.

And then there were what the Hebrews called the small mokhes. They did it themselves. They actually sat at the table themselves, too cheap to pay somebody else. And too unconcerned about their reputation to care what anybody thought. They did it themselves. It was one thing to be a publican; it was worse to be a mokhes. It was worse to be a mokhes, but far worse to be a little or a small mokhes.

You know what Matthew was? Matthew was the little mokhes of Capernaum. The worst man in the city. As far as the people were concerned, he was the most wretched human being in their town. They hated him. They paid him because they were afraid not to. Do you know what the rabbi said? “For a little mokhes, repentance is well nigh impossible.” If there’s one sinner who could never be forgiven, it would be a little mokhes. That’d be it.

And here he was, the little mokhes of Capernaum, sitting at his table, doing his thing. And Jesus said to him, “Follow Me.” And he did. And you can imagine the gasps.

And, after Matthew followed Jesus, He sat in the house, where many tax collectors and sinners came to sit with Him and His disciples (verse 10).

Recall that MacArthur just said that Matthew was a humble man. In verse 10 he refers only to ‘the house’, yet our commentators agree that this was Matthew’s house.

Matthew Henry’s commentary says:

The other evangelists tell us, that Matthew made a great feast, which the poor fishermen, when they were called, were not able to do. But when he comes to speak of this himself, he neither tells us that it was his own house, nor that it was a feast, but only that he sat at meat in the house; preserving the remembrance of Christ’s favours to the publicans, rather than of the respect he had paid to Christ. Note, It well becomes us to speak sparingly of our own good deeds.

Now observe, 1. When Matthew invited Christ, he invited his disciples to come along with him. Note, They that welcome Christ, must welcome all that are his, for his sake, and let them have a room in their hearts. 2. He invited many publicans and sinners to meet him. This was the chief thing Matthew aimed at in this treat, that he might have an opportunity of bringing his old associates acquainted with Christ. He knew by experience what the grace of Christ could do, and would not despair concerning them. Note, They who are effectually brought to Christ themselves, cannot but be desirous that others also may be brought to him, and ambitious of contributing something towards it. True grace will not contentedly eat its morsels alone, but will invite others. When by the conversion of Matthew the fraternity was broken, presently his house was filled with publicans, and surely some of them will follow him, as he followed Christ. Thus did Andrew and Philip, John 1 41, 45; 4 29. See Judges 14 9.

MacArthur has more:

They knew who He was. They knew everything He taught. They knew everything He did. They knew His wonders and His miracles and His signs. They heard what He said. They knew He was come for the forgiveness of sins. They knew exactly what they were getting into, and they were ready. Their hearts were prepared. And Matthew was a man under conviction. And Matthew was a man who I believe must with all of his heart have wanted the forgiveness, but the system told him he could never have it …

In fact, Luke adds a little statement. It says, “He forsook all.” Matthew doesn’t say that. He won’t say that; he’s too humble. He’s not going to talk about what he left. I mean if you were a fisherman, and Jesus said, “Follow me,” you could follow, and you could always go back to the fish. Right? I mean they’re always going to be there. But if you’re a tax collector, and you get up and say, “Goodbye, I’m leaving,” you can’t ever go back, because the next day, Rome is going to have somebody in your place, and it’s all over.

So, the price that Matthew paid was far greater than much of the others paid. And he walked away, and Luke says, “He forsook all of it.” He didn’t say, “Well, I’m coming, Lord, but, hey, I can finance this whole operation if you just let me grab these bags.” He didn’t say that. He just followed. The Lord didn’t need that. Matthew knew about the Lord. His home base had been the city of Capernaum, and all you have to do is go to Capernaum to see what it’s like. It is a tiny, little place. Miracle upon miracle upon miracle had happened there. He knew. That’s why he followed so fast …

Amy Carmichael, in a very lovely little poem, wrote, “I heard Him call “Come follow”/That was all./ My gold grew dim/My heart went after him./I rose and followed/That was all./Would you not follow/If you heard Him call?”

I guess, for Matthew, he couldn’t understand why anybody wouldn’t follow when Jesus offered forgiveness. Matthew lost a career and gained a destiny. He lost his security and gained an undreamed adventure. He lost material things and gained a spiritual fortune. And Matthew understood the Spirit of the Lord. He knew He had come to save sinners, and he knew that he was the worst, the unforgiveable, the worst man in his town. That’s how far it goes; that’s how deep it reaches.

Well, he was so overwhelmed that he decided to throw a banquet. That’s right, it was the banquet attended by the most rotten people in the history of banquets, because the only people Matthew knew were crummy, rotten, wretched, vile people. Because no one else would come near him. They despised him. So, the only people he knew were people like himself: prostitutes, murderers, robbers, thieves, irreligious, godless, and other tax collectors. Perhaps the local gabbai and of his sort in other districts that he knew.

Now, Matthew’s Gospel doesn’t tell us about the details of the banquet, because Matthew, again, in his humility, won’t talk about that. But like so many new believers, the first thought he had was to win his friends to Christ. So, as we read Mark 2 and Luke 5, we find that he calls this banquet in his own house. And Jesus is the honored guest. He’s got the whole thing set up. He invites all the wretched, rotten, vile people in Capernaum, and they’re all in one building. And Jesus is the honored guest.

The Pharisees saw the banquet and asked our Lord’s disciples why He ate with tax collectors and sinners (verse 11).

Notice that the Pharisees were too cowardly to ask Jesus personally.

Henry says:

They brought their cavil, not to Christ himself; they had not the courage to face him with it, but to his disciples.

MacArthur tells us:

… they linger outside – the Pharisees. They wait till the banquet’s over. And as the disciples come out, they don’t confront Jesus head on, they corner the disciples …

Now, this is not just an honest question, “Why – Why is He doing this? Could you please tell us?” It’s not that. What they’re really saying is a stinging rebuke. It is the venting of their bitterness, “Shame on you. I mean fraternizing with Master or a Teacher who hangs around with such riff-raff.” I mean this is vindictive. This is hateful, “True religious people, pious people, righteous men like we are, we shun such vile sinners.” That’s what they’re saying …

And so, they say, “What kind of a leader have you got who hangs around with the scum?”

Jesus heard the Pharisees, and He said that those who are well have no need of a physician, only those who are sick (verse 12).

It was a statement of irony. If any people were spiritually sick, it was the Pharisees, not Matthew’s guests, who could be open to the Gospel. The Pharisees, on the other hand, were mired in their own pride and blind to our Lord’s truths.

Henry says:

He proves the necessity of the case of the publicans: they that be whole need not a physician, but they that are sick. The publicans are sick, and they need one to help and heal them, which the Pharisees think they do not.

… Thus the Pharisees desired not the knowledge of Christ’s word and ways, not because they had no need of him, but because they thought they had none. 

MacArthur says that Jesus was also telling the Pharisees that they should have done their part in ministering to the publicans (tax collectors) and other sinners:

Verse 12, “When Jesus heard, He said unto them, “They that are well need not a physician, but they that are sick.” The Greek order emphasizes “need not.” Well, people don’t need a physician; sick people do. And what He’s doing is indicting the Pharisees. He’s saying, “You are the ones who are saying they are the sickest. Then by your own affirmation, they most need the physician.”

The analogy is simple. A physician can be expected to go among sick people. And so, a forgiver should be expected to go among sinful people. His defense is simple. He went to the people who had the deepest need. If the eyes of the Pharisees – and get this – “If you’re so perceptive as to see them as sinners, if your diagnosis is so accurate, where is your passion? Where is your concern? Are you a doctor who diagnoses but has no desire to cure?” What an indictment of their self-righteousness. What an indictment of their judgmental spirit that was spoken of in Matthew 7. What an indictment of their condemning attitude, these pious critics. They so freely have defined them all as sinners, but are utterly indifferent.

Jesus told the Pharisees to learn what this means (verse 13), ‘”I desire mercy, not sacrifice.” For I have come to call not the righteous but sinners.’

The Pharisees lacked mercy. They needed to learn how to apply Scripture.

Henry explains:

Christ’s conversing with sinners is here called mercy: to promote the conversion of souls is the greatest act of mercy imaginable; it is saving a soul from death, Jam 5 20. Observe how Christ quotes this, Go ye and learn what that meaneth. Note, It is not enough to be acquainted with the letter of scripture, but we must learn to understand the meaning of it. And they have best learned the meaning of the scriptures, that have learned how to apply them as a reproof to their own faults, and a rule for their own practice. This scripture which Christ quoted, served not only to vindicate him, but, [1.] To show wherein true religion consists; not in external observances: not in meats and drinks and shows of sanctity, not in little particular opinions and doubtful disputations, but in doing all the good we can to the bodies and souls of others; in righteousness and peace; in visiting the fatherless and widows. [2.] To condemn the Pharisaical hypocrisy of those who place religion in rituals, more than in morals, ch. 23 23. They espouse those forms of godliness which may be made consistent with, and perhaps subservient to, their pride, covetousness, ambition, and malice, while they hate that power of it which is mortifying to those lusts.

MacArthur turns the Pharisees’ question back on to us today:

And the same is true with us. We say, “Oh, so-and-so’s a terrible sinner. Why, those neighbors of mine, they’re awful people. Sinful.” And you just stand on your own porch and damn them as sinners, or do you care? Is there mercy? There is the issue.

While Jesus spoke those words to the Pharisees, suddenly a leader of the synagogue came in and knelt before Him — worshipping Him — saying that his daughter had just died but if Jesus would only lay His hand on her, she would live (verse 18).

This leader — or ruler, in other Gospel accounts — was Jairus, although Matthew does not name him.

Contrast Jairus with the Pharisees. He believed Jesus could bring his daughter back to life. Meanwhile, the Pharisees condemned Jesus outright for dining with sinners, the spiritually sick whom He came to save.

Matthew Henry tells us:

… here was one, a church ruler, whose faith condemned the unbelief of the rest of the rulers …

He came with his errand to Christ himself, and did not send his servant. Note, It is no disparagement to the greatest rulers, personally to attend on the Lord Jesus. He worshipped him, bowed the knee to him, and gave him all imaginable respect. Note, They that would receive mercy from Christ must give honour to Christ …

His faith in this address; “My daughter is even now dead,” and though any other physician would now come too late (nothing more absurd than post mortem medicina—medicine after death), yet Christ comes not too late; he is a Physician after death, for he is the resurrection and the life; “O come then, and lay thy hand upon her, and she shall live.“ This was quite above the power of nature (a privatione ad habitum non datur regressus—life once lost cannot be restored), yet within the power of Christ, who has life in himself, and quickeneth whom he will … while Christ was here upon earth working miracles, such a confidence as this was not only allowable but very commendable.

MacArthur puts Jairus’s request into context for us:

You remember what was going on here? He had cast the demons out of the maniac of Gadara and sent them into a herd of swine. He had calmed the sea and the wind, and you can believe that word spread rather rapidly. In fact, when He came back to Capernaum, that little village on the very northern most point of the Sea of Galilee, where Peter lived, when He came back to that village after the incredible incident in Gadara, He was staying in Peter’s house. And the disciples of John the Baptist came and said, “Why aren’t you fasting? What are all of you disciples and the Lord eating like this? Why aren’t you fasting? Why don’t you fulfill the prescribed fasts?

And with that in mind, we come to verse 18, “While He was speaking these things” – in answer to the scribes and Pharisees and the disciples of John the Baptist – “there came a certain ruler.” If I may stretch your thinking a little bit, this speaks to me of Jesus’ accessibility. People could get to Him. I mean He was there. There was no ivory tower. He’s not a religious guru who’s 18 feet up with lilies all around Him. He’s not at arm’s length. He doesn’t live in a monastery. There’s no hierarchy …

It thrills me that He’s accessible to the crowds. That you can get to Him. But let me take it a second step. But let me take it a second step. Jesus was not only accessible, and if I can kind of just change the word a little, He was also available. And by that, I’m not so concerned with the crowd as the individual. He was not only accessible, in that you could get to Him; He was available in that he would come to you. That’s a marvelous reality. That Jesus was sensitive to who was in that crowd and He would move to that person with real availability.

We learn more about Jairus’s position in Capernaum:

Well, this man was a ruler. Mark adds he was one of the rulers of the synagogue. And Luke says he was rosh ha keneseth, which means he was the chief elder of the synagogue. And his name was Jairus. Do you know what this man was? He was number one representative of the religious establishment in Capernaum. He’s the chief elder. Not in the temple in Jerusalem, but in the synagogue in Capernaum.

Now, synagogues were ruled by elders. They were the spiritual leaders. They had the administration of the place. They were to coordinate and make sure everything was conducted properly, all the public worship. They were men of great influence. And out of their group – they would have a lot of elders – they would elect someone to be the head man who would preside, who would supervise, who would appoint the preacher, and the one who prayed, and the one who read out of the law. And they were responsible [for] administ[ering] the whole synagogue.

And here’s the number one guy. This is the epitome of the religious establishment. And for all intents and purposes, if you know anything about the Gospels, you know that the religious establishment was dead set against Christ. They fought Him tooth and nail all the way through His life. And this guy was looked at as the epitome of that. And he may have even been a Pharisee; we don’t know. But he had a lot of peer pressure to be a faithful, Jewish, traditional religionist. And he comes to Jesus.

Now, you might expect him to come and say, “Now, sir, I am the chief elder of the synagogue. I’d like to speak to You. Could we please have a private conversation?” That’s not what he did. He didn’t protect himself at all. It’s amazing. Look at verse 18, “He came and he worshipped Him.” Now, that word in the Greek, to worship, means to prostrate one’s self before someone and either kiss his feet, kiss the hem of his garment, or kiss the ground in front of him. Now, this is a heretical person, this Jesus. And the Pharisees are after Him, and the religious establishment is after Him. And this guy does what you only did in that culture to a deity, someone who was divine, someone who was holy in an unhuman way, or some King who had stated that He was indeed divine. You didn’t do this to human beings unless they were in some sense supernatural.

Jesus got up and followed him, with his disciples (verse 19).

Henry says:

… he was not only willing to grant him what he desired, in raising his daughter to life, but to gratify him so far as to come to his house to do it … The variety of methods which Christ took in working his miracles is perhaps to be attributed to the different frame and temper of mind which they were in who applied to him, which he who searcheth the heart perfectly knew, and accommodated himself to. He knows what is in man, and what course to take with him. And observe, when Jesus followed him, so did his disciples, whom he had chosen for his constant companions; it was not for state, or that he might come with observation, that he took his attendants with him, but that they might be the witnesses of his miracles, who were hereafter to be the preachers of his doctrine.

The other synoptic Gospels go into greater detail, informing us that the girl was 12 years old, a full woman in that era. MacArthur tells us:

Now, Matthew’s account is brief. Luke’s is larger, and Mark’s is larger. And the other Gospel writers tell us that the first time the man spoke to Jesus, he said, “My daughter is dying.” And later on, he was informed that she was dead, and he told Jesus she was dead. Matthew just condenses it all, leaving out some of the preliminaries. And at this point, Matthew just says now she’s dead. “My daughter’s dead.”

And the other writers tell us that the little girl was 12 years old. And 12 years and 1 day in the Jewish culture meant that you were a woman. For a man, it was 13 years and 1 day, and that’s why you have bar mitzvah. We’ve known all along the women were ahead of us, haven’t we? Twelve years and one day; she’d just reached the flowering of womanhood. She had just bloomed. Twelve years of sunshine had turned into the shadow of death. Do you know why he came? He didn’t care about social pressure; he didn’t care about prestige; he didn’t care about religious establishment. His daughter was dead, and there were no resources within his system to deal with that.

MacArthur says that Jairus was a broken man as he contemplated the loss of his daughter:

Now, let me tell you two things about this man. Number one, he had a deep need, and that’s why people come to Christ. You don’t have a need; you’re not going to come …

It’s apparent to me that the man, in his mind, probably already believed in the power of Christ. He probably was overawed by Christ, but maybe up until this point, He had been somewhat hesitant.

But now, when his daughter was dying, and now dead, he came in desperation. His motive wasn’t totally pure; he didn’t come just because of the wonder of Jesus Christ. He didn’t come just because he had some great love for Christ. He came because he was hurting, and he was hurting deeply. And he knew a pain that he’d never experienced in his life. There was a hurting that was not like anything else, and there was no alleviation. This was so final. His heart was literally crushed.

It’s the people with need that come. And that’s why the Gospel is preached with the reception to the poor, and the sick, and the weak, and the ignoble, and the captives, and the prisoners. And so, he came. And even though his faith was inadequate, his motive was a little bit selfish, Jesus was available.

I talked about his need. Let me talk about his faith for a minute. That’s the second thing that made him come. He really did believe that Jesus had the power to do this. And that is some marvelous faith.

Then, again suddenly, a woman who had been suffering haemorrhages for 12 years came up behind him and touched the fringe of His cloak (verse 20), saying to herself (verse 21), ‘If I only touch his cloak, I will be made well’.

As with Jairus, we have fuller accounts of this lady in the other synoptic Gospels. Because she was visibly bleeding — because of a female ailment, no doubt — she was an outcast, according to Mosaic law. She had also, in desperation, spent all her money on primitive cures to no avail. Medicine was hardly advanced in those days and did not become so until the late 19th century.

Henry offers this analysis:

This woman was diseased with a constant issue of blood twelve years (v. 20); a disease, which was not only weakening and wasting, and under which the body must needs languish; but which also rendered her ceremonially unclean, and shut her out from the courts of the Lord’s house; but it did not cut her off from approaching to Christ. She applied herself to Christ, and received mercy from him, by the way, as he followed the ruler, whose daughter was dead, to whom it would be a great encouragement, and a help to keep up his faith in the power of Christ. So graciously does Christ consider the frame, and consult the case, of weak believers.

… She believed she should be healed if she did but touch the very hem of his garment, the very extremity of it. Note, There is virtue in every thing that belongs to Christ. The holy oil with which the high priest was anointed, ran down to the skirts of his garments, Ps 133 2. Such a fulness of grace is there in Christ, that from it we may all receive, John 1 16.

Jesus turned, and seeing her, said, ‘Take heart, daughter; your faith has made you well’, and instantly she was made well (verse 22).

MacArthur refers to another Gospel account of this lady, wherein Jesus felt temporarily drained of His power:

He says, “I felt power go out of Me.” And then He looks around and says, “Who is that?”

MacArthur gives us the Greek meaning for the word ‘touch’:

Well, women basically didn’t go around touching men. And the word “touch” doesn’t mean to just touch; it means to grab …

Well, she had a problem, you see. She had been diseased with an issue of blood for 12 years. A 12-year-old girl and a woman with an issue of blood for 12 years. Jairus had a little girl, gave him 12 years of sunshine. This lady had known 12 years of shadow. Twelve years of laughter. Twelve years of tears. An interruption that becomes an opportunity.

Now, what is it to have an issue of blood? Well, basically, for 12 years this woman could not stop bleeding, perhaps due to a fibroid tumor in the womb, something that would be readily treated today by surgery. But she was perpetually unclean, unable to deal with this. Luke says she could not be cured. Incurable. Mark says she spent all her money on doctors and was worse. Luke wouldn’t say that because he was a doctor. From the Jewish point of view, you couldn’t imagine anything worse than being a woman with an issue of blood. It was humiliating beyond anything perhaps, except leprosy.

For example, very commonly, in Palestine, this issue of blood existed. And the Talmud, the Jewish codification of law gave 11 different cures for it that you were to try. Some of them were like tonics and herbal things, and astringents. And I don’t know whether they were effective or not. But you’d go through all of those, and then a whole lot of them were superstitious.

Note how affectionately Jesus addressed the woman, as ‘daughter’, then He commended her faith for making her well, which MacArthur thinks means that her faith ensured her salvation:

… she touched Jesus. Why? The same two reasons: she had a deep need, and she believed. She had a deep need. I mean she lost all the sense of propriety. There was a desperation there …

… This woman was there. And it says, “She touched the hem of his garment.”

Now, in the Old Testament, in Numbers 15:37 to 41, and Deuteronomy 22:12, the Jews were told that they were to mark their garments with a tzitzi. That’s the Hebrew word. Basically, it’s translated in the Old Testament fringe. Kraspedon is the Greek word, and it really means a tassel. And they did this: they wove blue thread through their garment, and they had four tassels of kind of a blue color, a bright blue color on their garment. And those tassels were woven in a certain configuration with certain kinds of thread, seven times around and eight times. And there were – there was the significance of various numbers. But the sum total, without going into detail, was that the threads were put together to represent the Word of God. Faithfulness, loyalty to the Word of God, and holiness unto the Lord, so that every time a Jew went anywhere, the world knew that he belonged to God. And every time He took his clothes off, or put his clothes on, he saw those things. And it was a reminder to him …

“She kept on” – in the Greek – “She kept on saying in herself, ‘If I may but touch His garment, I shall be well.’” She kept saying it over and over, as she struggled through and finally grabbed that tassel. Do you know what happened when she grabbed it? Instantly she was healed. And it says, “The Lord felt power pass from Him.” It was involuntary. Because everything He did, He did according to the will and power of the Father. Right? He wasn’t even involved in it. And then He said, “Who touched me?” Before He knew, in His humanness, who she was healed.

If you put the whole account together, the healing came first. Instantly as she grabbed on. And do you know what happened? This crowd and this moving to Jairus’ house, and all of a sudden, when that woman grabs that tassel, the frame freezes and everything gets out of focus, and you see just two people: that woman and Jesus. And the other Gospels tell us He said, “Who touched me?”

And the disciples said, “Are you kidding? Who touched you? People are clawing at You all over the place. Look at them all over the…”

“No,” He said, “there was a special one. I felt power go out of me. Who was that?”

She had faith, didn’t she? She said, “If I can just touch that thing.”

You say, “Well, it’s not exactly a perfected, mature faith.”

No, it’s almost like superstition, isn’t it? It’s almost kind of magical.

You say, “Well, the Lord certainly isn’t going to respond to that.”

Listen, faith as the grain of a mustard seed would move a mountain. The Lord’ll take – the Lord’ll take an inadequate faith like the man’s, that is somewhat selfish, and He’ll take an inadequate faith like the lady’s that is somewhat superstitious, and He’ll move it from there to the saving faith. He couldn’t let that lady go, or all she would have remembered maybe was the superstition. He had to pull her into the fullness of a relationship.

I don’t really believe she was healed by her faith. I think she was healed by the sovereignty of God. God chose to heal her. Jesus just said He felt power go out of Him. Jesus healed multitudes of people that had no faith.

You say, “Well, it says here her faith made her well.”

Oh, that’s different.

You say, “What do you mean different?”

You read for this? It says her faith made her well. And it doesn’t use the word for healing iaomai, the normal word for healing. You know what it used? Sōzō. The word means to be saved. Her faith has – what? – saved her.

Jesus did miracles everywhere, healed everybody of everything, but saved only those who had faith. He healed those without faith. Certainly the servant of the centurion didn’t have any faith we saw earlier. No, what I see here is the use of a unique word. And by the way, Matthew, Mark, and Luke all used that word sōzō which means to be saved.

Now, I think there’s a redemptive element in her faith. Oh, she wanted to just grab on, and it was kind of a – kind of a superstitious thing in a way. Jesus wouldn’t leave it at that. He drew her out and He saved her. The ruler had an inadequate motive that was selfishness. She had an inadequate faith that was superstition. And yet Jesus redeemed them both. It’s kind of like the man who said, “Lord, I believe; help Thou” – my what? – “my unbelief. Take me where I am, with my little faith, and move me to saving faith.”

Then Jesus arrived at Jairus’s house where he saw the flute players and the crowd making a commotion (verse 23).

As soon as someone in a Jewish household died, people began mourning loudly and musicians, most often for hire, were brought in.

MacArthur describes the mourning process:

Three basic things went on in a Jewish funeral. By the way, the girl’s been dead long enough for the funeral to start, so they knew she was very sick, and they’ve already been on call ready to move in. So you have professional mourners and they came in. They were professional shriekers. They screamed and shrieked and wailed and all this. But let me tell you the three things that were part.

First of all, there was the rending of garments. You were supposed to rip your clothes. That was symbolic of your grief, and they had 39 different rules and regulations on how to rip your clothes, according to the Talmud. You had to do it while you were standing up. You had to do it over your heart or near your heart. If you were a mother and father, it had to be right over your heart. If you were not the mother or father, it could be anywhere near. And you had to rip it big enough to stick your fist through. And then you ha