The Authority That Offends
Introduction: Two Kinds of Desperation
We live in a world full of desperate people. But desperation comes in two basic flavors. There is the desperation of the world, which is a frantic, hopeless scrabbling in the dark. It is the desperation of a man in quicksand, whose every effort to save himself only sinks him deeper. This is the desperation that ends in despair, cynicism, and bitterness. Then there is another kind of desperation, a godly desperation. This is the desperation that knows its own helplessness but also knows where help is to be found. It is the desperation that drives a man, not into himself, but out of himself and straight to the feet of Jesus Christ.
In our text today, Matthew skillfully weaves together two stories of this second kind of desperation. He presents us with two individuals who could not be further apart on the social ladder. We have a synagogue official, a man of standing and respectability, a religious insider. And we have a woman with a chronic hemorrhage, a nobody, ceremonially unclean for twelve years, a religious and social outcast. One is a man, the other a woman. One is prominent, the other anonymous. One has a public grief, the other a secret shame. But they share one crucial thing: they have both come to the end of their own resources. They are both utterly desperate, and their desperation has driven them to the only one who possesses true authority over the miseries of this fallen world, the Lord Jesus Christ.
This passage is not just a touching account of two miracles. It is a profound statement about the nature of Christ's authority. His authority is not tame. It does not ask for permission. It intrudes, it interrupts, it overturns, and it offends. It offends the laws of nature by healing the incurable. It offends the rules of religious purity by welcoming the unclean. And it offends the settled finality of death itself. We will see that true faith, the kind of faith that receives anything from God, is not a polite, abstract agreement with a set of doctrines. It is a desperate, lunging grab for the only lifeline available. And we will also see that the world's reaction to this divine authority is often not wonder, but scorn. The world loves its own kind of authority, the kind that can be managed and controlled. But when confronted with the absolute, untamable authority of the Son of God, it can only laugh in derision. Let us be the kind of people who press in with desperation, not the kind who stand back and laugh.
The Text
While He was saying these things to them, behold, a synagogue official came and was bowing down before Him, and said, “My daughter has just died; but come and lay Your hand on her, and she will live.” And Jesus got up and began to follow him, and so did His disciples.
And behold, a woman who had been suffering from a hemorrhage for twelve years, came up behind Him and touched the fringe of His garment; for she was saying to herself, “If I only touch His garment, I will be saved from this.” But Jesus turning and seeing her said, “Daughter, take courage; your faith has saved you.” At once the woman was saved from her hemorrhage.
And when Jesus came into the official’s house, and saw the flute-players and the crowd in noisy disorder, He was saying, “Leave; for the girl has not died, but is asleep.” And they began laughing at Him. But when the crowd had been sent out, coming in, He took her by the hand, and the girl got up. And this news spread throughout all that land.
(Matthew 9:18-26 LSB)
A Ruler's Humble Desperation (vv. 18-19)
The scene opens in the middle of Jesus' teaching, when His ministry is interrupted by a crisis.
"While He was saying these things to them, behold, a synagogue official came and was bowing down before Him, and said, 'My daughter has just died; but come and lay Your hand on her, and she will live.' And Jesus got up and began to follow him, and so did His disciples." (Matthew 9:18-19)
Notice first the context: "While He was saying these things." Jesus is always in the middle of His work when human need intrudes. His ministry is not a series of scheduled appointments. It is a constant flow of divine power meeting human brokenness. A synagogue official, a man named Jairus according to Mark and Luke, comes. This is no small thing. The religious establishment was, for the most part, deeply hostile to Jesus. For this man to come to Jesus, and to do so publicly, was an act of profound courage and social risk. His position, his reputation, his career, were all on the line.
What could drive a man to take such a risk? Desperation. His daughter, he says, "has just died." The Greek here can mean she is at the point of death, or has just now expired. The point is the same: from a human perspective, the situation is utterly hopeless. But look at his faith. It is not a perfect faith. He believes Jesus must physically come and lay His hand on her. He does not yet have the understanding of the centurion, who knew Jesus could heal with a word from a distance. But his faith is in the right person, and it is a real faith. He says, "she will live." This is not a question. It is a declaration of confidence. He has abandoned all other hope and has placed his entire trust in the authority of Jesus over death.
And how does Jesus respond? "Jesus got up and began to follow him." There is no hesitation, no interrogation, no demand for a more refined theology. Jesus honors this raw, desperate faith. He gets up from the table, interrupts His own discourse, and goes. This is our Lord. He is not an abstract principle or a distant deity. He is a God who gets up and walks into the mess of our lives. He meets us in our grief and desperation.
An Outcast's Secret Faith (vv. 20-22)
On the way to the ruler's house, another interruption occurs, this one even more dramatic.
"And behold, a woman who had been suffering from a hemorrhage for twelve years, came up behind Him and touched the fringe of His garment; for she was saying to herself, 'If I only touch His garment, I will be saved from this.' But Jesus turning and seeing her said, 'Daughter, take courage; your faith has saved you.' At once the woman was saved from her hemorrhage." (Matthew 9:20-22)
This woman is the polar opposite of Jairus. He is a named official; she is an anonymous sufferer. His need is public; her shame is private. And her condition is not just medical; it is ceremonial. According to the law of Moses (Leviticus 15), her constant bleeding made her perpetually unclean. Anything she touched became unclean. Anyone who touched her became unclean. For twelve years, she had been a prisoner, isolated from her community and barred from the worship of God in the temple. She was a walking contamination.
Her approach to Jesus is therefore furtive, done from behind, in the press of the crowd. She does not dare to address Him directly. Her action is a violation of the law; by touching Him, she should, by all rights, make Him unclean. But this is the glorious truth of the gospel: when the unclean touches the clean, the unclean does not defile the clean. Rather, the All-Clean One cleanses the unclean. Jesus is not contaminated by her; she is healed by Him.
Her faith, like Jairus', is mixed with what we might call superstition. She believes power resides in His physical garment. Yet, Jesus does not rebuke her for it. Why? Because her faith, however imperfectly expressed, was directed entirely at Him. She believed that He was the source of healing power. And her faith was rewarded. "If I only touch His garment, I will be saved." The word for saved here is sozo, which can mean physical healing or spiritual salvation. In the Bible, the two are often linked. Her physical healing was a sign and a seal of a deeper spiritual reality.
Jesus does not let her slip away anonymously. He stops. He turns. He finds her. He wants this to be a personal encounter, not an impersonal transaction. He calls her "Daughter," a term of incredible tenderness, restoring her to the family of God. He says, "take courage; your faith has saved you." He clarifies that it was not the garment that healed her, but her faith in Him. He honors her faith, corrects her understanding, and restores her publicly. At that very moment, she was made whole.
The Scorn of the Unbelieving (vv. 23-24)
When Jesus finally arrives at the official's house, He is met not with faith, but with the cynical ritual of professional grief.
"And when Jesus came into the official’s house, and saw the flute-players and the crowd in noisy disorder, He was saying, 'Leave; for the girl has not died, but is asleep.' And they began laughing at Him." (Matthew 9:23-24)
In that culture, it was customary to hire professional mourners, flute-players and wailing women, to make a great show of sorrow. This was their job. The house is filled with "noisy disorder." This is the world's way of dealing with death: a loud, chaotic, hopeless display. It is a performance of grief, not the quiet confidence of faith.
Into this scene of manufactured despair, Jesus speaks a word of absolute authority: "Leave." He clears the room. He will not perform His miracles for the entertainment of a cynical audience. Then He makes a statement that seems, on the surface, to be patently false: "the girl has not died, but is asleep."
The crowd's reaction is immediate and telling: "they began laughing at Him." This is the scorn of the worldly-wise. They are the professionals. They know death when they see it. They have seen it a thousand times. This carpenter from Nazareth, with his absurd pronouncements, is a fool. Their laughter is the voice of unbelief, the sound of a world that trusts only in its own miserable experience and has no category for the power of God. They are so certain in their knowledge of death that they cannot recognize the Lord of Life standing in their midst.
But Jesus is not speaking from their perspective. He is speaking from His. From His vantage point, from the perspective of the one who holds the keys of death and Hades, this girl's condition is no more permanent than a nap. For Him, raising her from the dead is as simple as waking a child in the morning. This statement is one of the most profound declarations of His deity in the gospels. He is redefining death itself in His presence.
Life by the Hand of the Master (vv. 25-26)
Once the unbelief is put outside, the miracle happens with beautiful simplicity.
"But when the crowd had been sent out, coming in, He took her by the hand, and the girl got up. And this news spread throughout all that land." (Matthew 9:25-26)
Notice the prerequisite: "when the crowd had been sent out." Faith is the atmosphere in which Jesus often works, and He will not cast His pearls before swine. He puts out the mockers, the scornful, the unbelieving. He takes with Him only the parents and His inner circle of disciples.
Then, the act itself is understated. There is no shouting, no elaborate ritual. "He took her by the hand." This is an act of profound tenderness and authority. According to the law, touching a dead body would make one ceremonially unclean for seven days. But again, Jesus reverses the curse. His touch does not bring contamination to Him; it brings life to the dead. The life that is in Him flows through His hand into the lifeless body of the child, and "the girl got up." It was immediate and complete.
This is the gospel in miniature. This is what Christ does for every one of His people. We are all like this little girl, not sleeping, but truly dead in our trespasses and sins. We are spiritually lifeless, with no ability to raise ourselves. We are like the woman, unclean and cut off from the life of God. And Christ comes to us. He is not afraid of our uncleanness. He is not afraid of our death. He puts out the mocking voices of the world, the flesh, and the devil. He takes us by the hand through His Word and Spirit, and He speaks life into us. He says, "Get up." And we who were dead are made alive together with Him.
Conclusion: The Only Authority That Matters
These two miracles, nested one inside the other, demonstrate the all-encompassing authority of Jesus Christ. He has authority over chronic disease and ceremonial uncleanness. He has authority over the final enemy, death itself. His power is not limited by social status, by religious rules, or by the laws of biology.
The central question this passage poses to us is this: which crowd are we in? Are we in the crowd of the desperate, pressing in to touch the hem of His garment, believing that He alone is our hope? Are we like Jairus, willing to risk everything to fall at His feet and say, "You can do this"? Or are we in the other crowd, the crowd of mockers? Are we the sophisticated, the cynical, the ones who "know better"? The ones who hear the claims of Christ and laugh, because we know that dead people stay dead and that miracles do not happen.
Every person is in one of those two crowds. There is no middle ground. You are either pressing toward Jesus in desperate faith, or you are standing off to the side, laughing in your unbelief. The gospel demands that you choose. Will you trust in the authority of your own experience, your own reason, your own despair? Or will you trust in the authority of the one who speaks to the dead and they get up?
He is still in the business of healing the unclean and raising the dead. He does it every time a sinner, dead in their trespasses, hears the gospel and is born again. He takes our unclean, sin-sick souls and makes them whole. He takes our spiritually dead hearts and commands them to live. Do not let the laughter of a dying world keep you from the only one who has the words, and the touch, of eternal life.