Mark 5:35-40 “While Jesus was still speaking, some men came from the house of Jairus, the synagogue ruler. ‘Your daughter is dead,’ they said. ‘Why bother the teacher anymore?’ Ignoring what they said, Jesus told the synagogue ruler, ‘Don’t be afraid; just believe.’ He did not let anyone follow him except Peter, James, and John the brother of James. When they came to the home of the synagogue ruler, Jesus saw a commotion, with people crying and wailing loudly. He went in and said to them, ‘Why all this commotion and wailing? The child is not dead but asleep.’ And they laughed at him.”

We know the day will come when the doctors can’t put us back together again. We have to let go of life. We have to let go of those we love. We can’t let it make us let go of Jesus. That is the temptation. “Why bother the teacher anymore?”

When death challenges our faith like that, that is just when Jesus is most useful. That is when he offers you and me the same comfort, the same invitation he gave to Jairus. “Don’t be afraid. Just believe.”

There is another enemy of faith in this story. The unbelieving see death as final and permanent. It is only sad. Even among the Jews, who generally believed in the resurrection, Jesus found the scene at the home of Jairus too much. The Jewish people of Jesus’ time often employed professional mourners, as though more tears and louder cries somehow honored the person who had passed. Tears are appropriate at a funeral when they are genuine, and they do honor the dead. But God’s people shouldn’t grieve like those who regard death as final, and permanent, and only sad. Those people may gather to “celebrate a life.” But all they can do is remember the past, and think about what they have lost.

When we have Jesus, we have something to look forward to, a happy future with those who have died. Jesus is the Prince of Life. Even if he did not intend to raise this little girl from the dead on this very day, his words “The child is not dead but asleep” were comforting and true, and the people at Jairus’s home should have known better. Even as Old Testament believers, Moses had taught them that the Lord was the “gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger, abounding in love, forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin.” David revealed that “He does not treat us as our sins deserve.” Daniel wrote that “Multitudes who sleep in the dust of the earth will awake: some to everlasting life…Those who are wise will shine like the brightness of the heavens.”

So Jesus was not the first to suggest that death was more like a sleep, or to know the reason why this should be so. He was simply the one who came to make it all a reality by dying to win our forgiveness, and rising to promise us life. And now he was here, at the home of Jairus, assuring the sad parents their daughter was merely asleep, and that she would wake to life again.

“But they laughed at him.” They still do, and at us for believing him. Atheist Richard Dawkins mocks Christian faith in God as ridiculous as believing in “flying spaghetti monsters.” Comedian and talk show host Bill Maher calls Christian faith in God “the purposeful suspension of critical thinking” and the God of the Bible a “psychopath.” Over 55 years ago, after Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first man in space, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev dismissed the idea of God by saying, “Gagarin flew into space but didn’t see any god there.” And so it goes.

Smart people, funny people, powerful people, and perhaps a few people we know personally mock our faith, and perhaps we start to have our own doubts. “Don’t be afraid.” Jesus says. “Just Believe.”

Mark 5:21-24 “When Jesus had again crossed over by boat to the other side of the lake, a large crowd gathered around him while he was by the lake. Then one of the synagogue rulers, named Jairus, came there. Seeing Jesus, he fell at his feet and pleaded earnestly with him, ‘My little daughter is dying. Please come and put your hands on her so that she will be healed and live.’ So Jesus went with him.”

Death is the big enemy we can’t seem to beat. We can hold it off for a while, but eventually it is going to win. As a professor of mine used to say, “The death rate has remained constant through all human history: one per person.” In his letter to the Corinthians Paul described it this way: “The last enemy to be destroyed is death” (1 Cor. 15:26). Death had come knocking at the home of a man named Jairus, and it posed a challenge to his faith.

Throughout the gospels, the men who were leaders in the synagogues were generally against Jesus. They didn’t support his ministry. As such a leader in his synagogue, Jairus was likely a relatively wealthy and respected man. If anyone in town had the resources and access to get his daughter the best possible care, it would be him.

But none of that had worked. The unrelenting approach of his daughter’s death drove Jairus to Jesus to seek his help. He knew about the miracles Jesus had been performing. By this time everyone did. Jesus was his last hope, and time was running out.

There are no atheists in foxholes, they say. A number of years ago I read in article in which an atheist scientist described how his atheistic mother who was dying of cancer would call out to God and ask him “why” in the worst of her pain. When it passed, she would wonder why she did that because he didn’t believe in God. The imminent threat of death can move even hardened unbelievers to pray.

And death is never very far away. We have medical know-how that is unequaled in history–chemicals, compounds, machines, devices, and knowledge that have added almost 30 years to the average person’s life over the last 100 years. But each time we cure one disease, it seems like three new ones pop up. Each new mass shooting, each new natural catastrophe, every report of a fatal accident, every terrorist attack is a reminder that I or someone I love might not make it home alive today.

The third stanza of the hymn I Walk in Danger All the Way reminds us, “Grim death pursues me all the way; Nowhere I rest securely. He comes by night, he comes by day, And takes his prey most surely.” You don’t have to be sick to know it’s just a matter of time.

Like Jairus, then, we need to realize how weak and helpless we are in the face of death. We need to be aware that our time is short. We need to let it drive us to Jesus as our only hope, our only help. Like the old standard prayer for those who mourn a death, we need to let it “teach us to number our days aright, that we may gain hearts of wisdom and finally be saved.”

Acts 27:22-25 “But now I urge you to keep up your courage, because not one of you will be lost; only the ship will be destroyed. Last night an angel of the God whose I am and whom I serve stood beside me and said, ‘Do not be afraid, Paul. You must stand trial before Caesar; and God has graciously given you the lives of all who sail with you. So keep up your courage, men, for I have faith in God that it will happen just as he told me.”

Note that this was a very specific promise for a very specific situation. God sent an angel to give Paul a revelation about this unique situation. It was not a promise that no one would ever die in a shipwreck. We can’t take the angel’s words, just as they are, and apply them to ourselves.

Note, too, that it wasn’t a promise that the storm would stop immediately. God’s promise offered a source of calm within the storm, while it was still raging. It didn’t mean the storm stopped blowing and beating on the ship altogether. The ship would still be lost. The cargo would still be gone. But the lives of 276 people on board were going to be spared.

Don’t underestimate the power and grace of this promise for the people who had given up hope and were convinced they could not be saved. I don’t know whether or not the other people on the boat believed Paul. But Paul certainly believed the promise. He may have a rough ride to go, but he knew that he was going to live, and so were the others with him. This was a bright light in a dark place, practically receiving their lives back from the dead. This was hope where all hope was gone, and it was entirely the gift of God, an expression of his grace for people who could do nothing to save themselves.

So, while this promise may not be ours directly, it reminds us that we do have promises for us to seize and hold onto in the middle of our storms: “If you make the Most High your dwelling– even the Lord, who is my refuge– then no harm will befall you, no disaster will come near your tent. For he will command his angels concerning you, to guard you in all your ways; they will lift you up in their hands, so that you will not strike your foot against a stone” (Psalm 91:9-12).

Even if it appears that the current crisis will take our lives, he promises, “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose” (Romans 8:28). And “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? As it is written: ‘For your sake we face death all day long; we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.’ No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future nor any powers, neither height nor depth nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:35-39).

And when our consciences are getting the best of us, overwhelming us with storms of guilt, we seize God’s promise, “He does not treat us as our sins deserve, or repay us according to our iniquities. For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his love for those who fear him; as far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us” (Psalm 103:10-12). We know that these promises are all true in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

These, then, are our calm in the storms of life and faith, our hope when all hope is gone. Seize them, never let them go, and you will always be safe from the storm.

Acts 27:21 “After the men had gone a long time without food, Paul stood up before them and said: ‘Men, you should have taken my advice not to sail from Crete; then you would have spared yourselves this damage and loss.”

Before the big storm, winds had been blowing against the ship, making it hard for them to make any headway. It was late in the year for sailing on the Mediterranean. Winter storms are treacherous. Paul had advised that they stop and winter where they were, near the southern point of Crete. Going on meant risking cargo and lives. The ship’s captain and owner were eager to get to their destination, however. The majority wanted to keep going. So the decision was made to set sail.

It is typical of human pride to underestimate our opposition and overestimate our own ability, like the sailors here. So the Titanic sets out across the Atlantic Ocean at an unreasonable speed through iceberg infested waters because its operators consider it unsinkable. A Persian force of hundreds of thousands of soldiers meets Alexander the Great and 40,000 Greeks at Issus, Turkey, in 333 B.C. expecting to slaughter the Greeks. But they fail to take into account the terrain on which they are fighting, and how it favors the smaller force. They end up going down in a defeat from which the Persian Empire never recovered.

We could go on with stories from politics, business, and law. “Pride goeth before a fall,” Proverbs says. Christians are no less susceptible than the overconfident world in which we live.

No place is this a bigger problem than in the battles and storms of faith. It is a foolish thing to face temptation as a do-it-yourself project. Our own sinful nature is stronger than we think. We are setting ourselves up for despair and everlasting defeat if we think we will handle our guilt and dispose of our sins with a self-made system of payments and time off for good behavior. “The ransom for a life is costly, no payment is ever enough–that he should live on forever and not see decay,” God reminds us in Psalm 49.

So the Lord will even let our sins have their way with us, and he will let our guilt overwhelm us. Many Christians have experienced these kinds of spiritual storms until he has confronted our pride and made it impossible for us to pretend that we are enough without him. Then we are ripe for his deliverance and ready for the grace he gives to those who are humble enough to receive it (James 4:6).

Acts 27:13 “When neither sun nor stars appeared for many days and the storm continued raging, we finally gave up all hope of being saved.”

The Apostle Paul was not living in the calm before the storm. He was suffering through the turmoil in the heart of the storm. For a couple of weeks, he and 275 other passengers were stuck on a ship driven and battered by a storm at sea. The crew had lost control to the wind and the waves. They were just trying to keep the ship together. They started to believe that all was lost.

Luke describes the battle with the storm in detail: the unfavorable winds the crew could not fight, wrapping ropes around the entire vessel just to keep it from coming apart, throwing the cargo overboard, then the ship’s tackle, to ride higher and keep from being swamped. The sailors used every strategy they knew just to keep the boat together and afloat.

But the storm was clearly bigger than they were. Passengers and crew lost hope. Not every storm takes us so far to the end of our own abilities and resources. No doubt these sailors had ridden storms out before, storms that didn’t stretch on and on like this. But when they had nothing left, no more ideas, no more tricks up their sleeves, they began to resign themselves to their fate. They would be lost at sea. They had lost hope.

Floods in Texas, New Mexico, and North Carolina recently have destroyed much property and taken many lives. Storms brought incredible amounts of rain in a short time, leaving people little opportunity to escape. Many of those who died were children. Catastrophes like this can be soul crushing. What hope do we have against such powerful forces?

Less literal storms batter us, too. Sometimes I hardly recognize the country in which I live. Some of our best friends and neighbors growing up were people whose political yard signs were exactly the opposite of the ones my parents would have put out in our front yard. So we disagreed politically. That never stopped us from looking out for each other, playing on the same teams, going camping together, or standing up in each other’s weddings. No one would have ever dreamed of vandalism over the difference.

Now the polarization in our country has grown so deep, so strident, so resentful that some family members can’t bring themselves to spend holidays together because of their differences. Some political scientists claim that the competing worldviews are so fundamentally different, so starkly opposed that there can be no more friendly coexistence. One side must win or the other. As the political storms rage in our country, is their hope for our future as the United States? Some think not.

In the sermon at a seminary graduation, I heard the preacher observe that the Lord has a regular habit of bringing his people to this place of no hope, to the very end of their options, to a complete dead end in life. If you and I have experienced it in our life’s storms, we are hardly alone. Abraham and Sarah were well past their child-bearing years when God was still promising them a son. Joseph had no reason to hope he would ever be a free man after years as a slave and then a prisoner. Moses and the children of Israel lost hope of surviving when Egypt’s armies had them pinned against the Red Sea. Jesus’ disciples obviously lost hope in their own storm at sea when they asked Jesus, “Don’t you care if we drown?”

Until we come to this point, we may not fully appreciate, we may not even want, God’s remedy for our lost hope, his answer for our dangerous storm. But here is God’s promise: “Call upon me in the day of trouble. I will deliver you, and you will glorify me” (Psalm 50:15). He wants to deliver us. The storm makes it possible for us to want his grace, and to see it when it appears. No storm, no matter how big, puts us beyond hope when the God who raises the dead and saves the world is on our side.

Exodus 3:7-8 “The Lord said, “I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers, and I am concerned about their suffering. So I have come down to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land into a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey—the home of the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites.”

No one should be shocked if the holy God had told Moses, “I have indeed seen the wickedness of my people in Egypt, and they are getting what they deserve.” No, he sees and hears the misery, the cries for help. Though sinful humanity has made a mess of our world, the Lord hasn’t abandoned us to a world where we devour each other. He hasn’t even left us to suffer the consequences of our own rebellion and foolishness. He is moved by our plight, whether inflicted by others or self-imposed.

“So I have come down to rescue them.” In a moment he will tell Moses that he is sending him. But before that he tells Moses that the Lord himself has come and will rescue. Moses was just the spokesman. The Lord himself showed up here on Mount Sinai, and later in Egypt, with the plagues that forced Israel’s oppressors to set them free, with the dry path to freedom through the middle of the Red Sea, with the waters that drowned their enemies. Moses spoke. The people watched. But the Lord rescued because he is gracious, and he loves his people in a way they could never earn or deserve.

This has always been God’s M.O., hasn’t it. For us, too, “I have come down to rescue them.” For us he didn’t clothe himself in a burning bush, but a baby’s body. He didn’t inflict devastating plagues. He reversed the plague of human misery by healing the sick, raising the dead, and freeing those possessed by demons. He drowned sin and death in a red sea of his own blood shed on the cross, and those enemies of ours are dead and defeated. He leads us out of our tombs to a better promised land, not occupied by Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites, but saints and angels gathered around God’s throne.

You and I are the spokesman. Tell the story faithfully. But the Lord rescues because he cares about our suffering, he is gracious, and he loves us in a way we could never earn or deserve.

Exodus 3:4-6 “When the Lord saw that he had gone over to look, God called to him from within the bush, ‘Moses! Moses!’ and Moses said, ‘Here I am.’ ‘Do not come any closer, God said. ‘Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy ground.’”

Perhaps we are surprised to hear God say, “Moses, keep your distance.” I thought he loved us. Don’t we sing, “What a friend we have in Jesus?” Doesn’t he pick us up in his arms and carry us in that “Footprints in the Sand” story posted on plaques in a million living rooms? What gives?

There is the little matter of human sin. In Psalm 24 David observes: “Who may ascend the hill of the Lord? Who may stand in his holy place? He who has clean hands and a pure heart…” But that is just our problem. We have dirty hands and a polluted heart. We do things that make God mad. We want things that defy his will.

This is a problem for a holy God. We can no more ask him to be okay with this than we can ask him to stop being God. A god who ignores sin, who accepts it as merely a different choice, who shrugs his shoulders and says, “Do whatever you want,” is a god that neither you, nor I, nor anyone else should or could respect. If someone else takes your things, should he just say, “That’s okay.” If someone else took your life, should his reaction be, “Who am I to judge?”

A holy God acknowledges, “Sin is a problem. It puts a distance between you and me. If something isn’t done about it, that distance will be as far as heaven is from hell, and it is going to last forever and ever.”

So God demands respect. “Keep your distance, Moses. Take off your shoes.” If you visit my house, you can wear your shoes all over the house if you like. I don’t care. I do it. But you know that many people expect you to drop your shoes at the door. They don’t want what’s on the bottom of your shoes tracked all over the carpet. For some cultures, like the Japanese, taking your shoes off inside is a general matter of respect. The Lord, too, was impressing on Moses, “I don’t want what your sandals have picked up from tramping around with the sheep, and living in your filthy world, tracked into my holy presence. You will respect my holiness and purity.”

Moses got the message. “Then he said, ‘I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.’ At this Moses hid his face, because he was afraid to look at God.” The Lord is not a one dimensional character from a cartoon. There is more to him than this holiness. But we have to reckon with his holiness, too. And Moses did so when he covered his face.

This is the God who sends us to serve him, and there are a couple of things to take away for our own lives of service. We approach serving God with a sense of seriousness and awe. Being a Christian isn’t a hobby. It is a high and holy calling. It demands our highest and our best.

If the Lord takes his holiness so seriously, we have no right to compromise his holy standards. We are called, all of us, to uphold them all. The world won’t like them. We will fail to keep them. That’s not okay. That’s a call to repentance, repentance we all need every day. But if we decide to fudge on God’s holy standards instead, and let things slide, and won’t confront sin in ourselves or others, that serves no one.

Because God’s holiness is accompanied by his love, he not only demands holiness, he gives it through the forgiveness of sins. “Christ loved the church, and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless” (Ephesians 5:25-27). So cleansed, we are qualified to stand in God’s holy presence and serve him with holy lives.

Exodus 3:1-3 “Now Moses was tending the flock of Jethro his father-in-law, the priest of Midian, and he led the flock to the far side of the desert and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. There the angel of the Lord appeared to him in flames of fire from within a bush. Moses saw that though the bush was on fire it did not burn up. So Moses thought, ‘I will go over and see this strange sight–why the bush does not burn up.”

Negative skeptics of the Bible sometimes try to explain away the miracles Moses did in Egypt with naturalistic explanations. The Nile River turning to “blood” was the result of a mud slide of red clay upstream. This drove the frogs out of the river and they became a nuisance in the Egyptian homes. Away from the water the frogs died, and their decaying bodies produced first the plague of gnats, and then the flies. You get the picture.

The burning bush is not the biggest miracle the Lord ever performed, but it pretty much defies naturalistic explanations. The bush was engulfed in fire, but the fire was not being fed by the bush. The branches were not charred, and the leaves did not wither and turn to ash in the heat. A voice speaks to Moses from within the bush. Unless one claims that Moses had schizophrenic episodes, this is an example of God’s supernatural power to suspend the laws of nature.

Moses did not immediately connect the dots between this display of divine power and his call. He later tried to convince the God who could suspend the laws of nature like this that somehow Moses’ own talents were too limited for the mission he was giving him. Moses failed to put two and two together. But we shouldn’t. One of the reasons to be confident we can fulfill the mission God gives us is the power of the God who sends us.

That’s not to say that miracles are guaranteed. One of our country’s first really big prosperity preachers used to say, “Expect a Miracle.” The problem is, part of what makes a miracle a miracle is that it is relatively rare.

So we don’t “expect” miracles. But we still depend on God’s power and fully trust his ability to help. “Pastor, will you pray for me?” my people sometimes ask. It’s not as though I personally have powers to cure cancer, heal injuries, or relieve heartache when they ask. But I know the God who does. He is the one who sent me to serve them. His power gives all of us confidence to pray even for the impossible. Then we see how he will answer, whether by bending natural laws or using them fully to our advantage.

What if we think we don’t fit needs of the people God wants us to serve? What if we feel we have been mismatched with our assignment? Perhaps our personal gifts don’t seem right. By any reasonable measure, most would consider us too old, or too young for the job. We have no experience with this kind of thing. What do we have to offer?

We have the gospel message God has given us. It is the key to every human heart. Paul calls it the “power of God for salvation.” It is the quintessential power of the God who sends us. Our callings are not about you, or me, any more than Moses’ ministry was about him, or Aaron, or the fickle Children of Israel he was sent to lead. It is about our powerful God. He’s the one who sends us. Expect him to make something of it.

Revelation 20:4 “I saw thrones on which were seated those who had been given authority to judge. And I saw the souls of those who had been beheaded because of their testimony for Jesus and because of the word of God. They had not worshiped the beast or his image and had not received his mark on their foreheads or their hands. They came to life (literally, simply ‘they lived’ in Greek) and reigned with Christ a thousand years.”

In the previous vision, the binding of Satan lasted a thousand years. This scene, too, is said to last a thousand years. After seeing that the Angel is Jesus, and the dragon is the devil, and chain is the gospel, and the binding is the gospel’s success, we don’t suddenly become hyper literal when it comes to the thousand years. Like the rest, it is a picture. It is the complete period of time set by God in which these things happen, and it is the time we are living in right now. It began with Jesus’ ministry on earth. It ends when he returns for judgment. This is the spiritual reality we don’t see with our eyes, because we can’t see into the spiritual realm.

But it is a comfort we see through the eyes of faith. This second picture is gospel truth we celebrate every time a believer dies and goes home. It is a central message of every truly Christian funeral. The people for whom John originally wrote Revelation had seen their leaders beheaded because they refused to compromise their faith for the Roman government. Some of them may have had the grim task of gathering up the bodies and burying them. The death of someone we love and respect is always deflating and depressing. The loss of these church leaders felt a lot like defeat.

John wanted them to know, “They’re not dead. Jesus has delivered them. I saw their souls sitting on thrones in heaven. They live and rule with Christ, just like you and they have since the day of your new birth, the day you came to faith and your soul rose to new spiritual life. This first resurrection of faith goes on, and it will continue in heaven until the day Jesus returns.” In the Gospel of John Jesus tells us, “I tell you the truth, a time is coming and has now come when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live” (John 5:25). Already in Jesus day, that time had come. The spiritually dead and unbelieving were hearing Jesus’ voice, and they were coming to spiritual life. That’s a resurrection, the first one we experience.

And that life doesn’t end when our bodies die. It accompanies our souls to heaven, like John sees here. Truly, “Blessed and holy are those who have part in the first resurrection. The second death has no power over them, but they will be priests of God and of Christ and will reign with him for a thousand years” (Revelation 20:6). When we die the first time, it is no defeat. In heaven we keep on living. We keep on ruling. And for those who have risen to spiritual life and made it to heaven, there is no second death. We will not be condemned to everlasting judgment and hell. Jesus has delivered us from death’s defeat.

The Book of Revelation delivers its message through fantastic and even frightening imagery. God pulls back the curtain and lets us see the spiritual war going on between heaven and hell. These words are no exception. But they aren’t intended to scare us. They are given for our comfort. Jesus still delivers his people, and neither death nor Satan can win.