Hurry Up, Jesus! | Ryan Kramer

Listen, as we hop into today's message, how many of you are familiar with that phrase, hurry up and wait? Hurry up and wait. Like, if you're military in the room, you probably know that better than any of us do, but that phrase, hurry up and wait, essentially it's the idea that, you know, you've got to kind of rush to either get somewhere or to get maybe a project done that's part of a bigger project, and you spend all this time and energy, and you're rushing to get it done or to get there, until all of a sudden, once you do, you're just sitting around waiting. Like, it's like, okay, I've done my part, but then I had no idea I was going to get to this place and then just sit around and nothing seems to be happening, and I don't know if you noticed, but that phrase originated back in the 40s with World War II. And so, it originated because the soldiers were being asked to get in formation, to get all their gear together, and so they would rush to get together, to go out for battle, and then they would end up waiting, sometimes minutes, sometimes hours, sometimes days, just waiting, hurry up and waiting. And for a soldier, they know how frustrating that can be until they understand why the waiting has been happening. You see, in just about every situation, the reason why they were hurrying up and then waiting was because whoever their command was, whoever the commanding officer was, there was something that they knew about the situation that the soldiers didn't know. They knew more about the mission, they knew more about the power and the timing and making sure you're in the right place at the right time. They knew more about what was, like, around or over the horizon that maybe the soldiers didn't know. And for the soldiers during that period, they didn't always understand the pace in which things were happening, so they had to trust the one that was setting the pace. And I think life, especially as being a Christ follower, has a way of feeling like everything in our life is hurry up and wait. To hurry up and wait, like, think about the situations, and I don't know what your personality is like.

I know mine, it's like everything in my world seems urgent. It always seems, like, super important and super urgent, and maybe for some of you, you've experienced that with a doctor's visit, right? You go to the doctor and you're hoping to be able to get some answers to some things that are happening in your body, and by the end of the doctor's appointment, you leave with more questions than answers. It's like a hurry up and wait kind of moment. Or maybe for some of you, it's, you know, you've taken the step of faith when it comes to being obedient with your finances, but then you're stuck in this moment of this hurry up and wait, like, OK, I've been obedient, but God, when are you going to, or how are you going to, you know, make things ultimately happen in our life? For some of you couples that are in the room today, you know, maybe for you, a hurry up and wait moment is just trying to navigate infertility in your life in the season. And everything that you do, there is all of this hope that that's going to be the thing that helps you to be able to celebrate the dream that, you know, you and your spouse have about building your family, and every time you take those steps, it's like a hurry up and wait to see what ends up happening. Maybe for some of you today, it's a promise. It's something that you feel like God has spoken to you, has revealed to you through the years. Maybe it's financially, maybe it's a business, maybe it's family, maybe it's a kid that is lost, that doesn't know Jesus, and there's this promise that you've been holding on to, but it's like that hurry up and wait. It's like, God, when is this promise going to come to pass? You know, every one of us have these hurry up and wait moments and situations in our life, and when the situations and the circumstances… When they tend to be urgent in our life, see if this kind of strikes a chord with you that we assume that God should be urgent in His moving too. What becomes urgent to us, we believe should be urgent to God. And today what we're going to discover is that maybe that's not the right diagnosis,

that maybe today that the pace of Jesus and Him moving in our life the way that we would want Him to move, maybe that's not a problem to solve. Maybe there's something going on, there's something that God is trying to reveal to us in the waiting season that we desperately need to be able to hold on to, to be reminded about in our day-to-day life. Today we're going to be looking at a story, we're going to be meeting a father whose entire world is about to be flipped upside down. His daughter is dying, every second matters. And Jesus, He's decided to help out, but instead of Jesus hurrying up and fixing the problem, Jesus slows down. And when He slows down, it ultimately becomes the father's worst nightmare. And what we're going to learn today is we're going to learn a little bit about why Jesus slew down, and what Jesus was doing behind the scenes that maybe this father didn't understand until later in the story. If you're taking notes today, I've entitled today's message, Hurry Up, Jesus. Hurry up, Jesus. Hurry up, Jesus. Let's pray. Father, we thank You for Your Word. We thank You for the promise of Your Spirit in our lives. And today as we open Your Word, Father, speak to us. God give us ears to hear and a heart to receive. Lord, all that You have for us today, in Jesus' name, amen. Amen. So Matthew chapter 9. And so, let me set the scene a little bit for those that might be here today or tuning in today for the first time. So we've been in this series and looking at Matthew and Matthew 8 and 9. And Matthew 8 and 9 and these miracles that Jesus has been doing over the last nine weeks is really all about answering one question, and that is, who is Jesus?

Like Matthew's been wanting us to understand, have a deeper understanding of who is Jesus. What is His character like? What kind of authority does Jesus have in our life and in the world? And today, Matthew is bringing us to a moment where all of that, Jesus' character and His authority gets tested. And we've been looking at Matthew and Mark specifically out of the last, you know, three weeks because Matthew is really more of a summary. It's kind of like the cliff notes of what is happening because Matthew's mindset is not to give us all the details of what Jesus was doing. You know, his mindset is helping us understand the authority of Jesus, and he's trying to help these Jewish people to understand that Jesus is the promised Messiah. And we've been digging into some of the other gospels, specifically Mark, because Mark gives us some of the details. Mark's not as concerned about what Matthew is concerned about. Mark is wanting us to feel the moment and to understand through various details of the situation, the significance of what Jesus is doing and the impact that it has on people. And so I want us to first read Matthew, which again is more of the kind of cliff notes version, and then we'll get into Mark, which is a little more detailed. So Matthew chapter 9 verse 18 says that Jesus was saying this, that the leader of a synagogue came and knelt before Him. This leader, we're going to learn, is Jairus. And he says this, that my daughter has been dead, or just died, he said, but you can… Bring her back to life again, if you just come, and lay your hand on him. Now I think this is interesting, and we're gonna unpack it in a little bit, but the whole idea that Jairus kneels down before Jesus is super significant. And we're gonna unpack that here in a moment, but in verse 19 it says that Jesus and his disciples,

they got up and Jesus went with him. And then the next few verses, if you're reading along in your Bible, the next verses unpack a little bit of the woman with the issue of blood, which we talked about last week. And so I would encourage you to go back to YouTube, you're gonna watch that message, especially if you're dealing with frustration in this season. We talked about frustration and what God is helping us to see in seasons of frustration. So in verse 23 is where it starts to pick back up with this specific story that when Jesus arrived at the official's home, that he said, or saw the noisy crowd and heard the funeral music. Get out, he told them. The girl isn't dead, she is only asleep. But the crowd laughed at him. And the crowd was put outside, however, Jesus went in and took the girl by the hand and she stood up. Verse 26 says that the report of this miracle that swept through the entire countryside. So now let's look at Matthew chapter five. Again, this is Peter's experience. Peter is actually with Jesus. Peter is actually one of the disciples that is gonna be in the room with Jesus when he performs this miracle. And Mark is documenting Peter's experience. And so we pick up in verse 21,

Jesus got into the boat again and went back to the other side of the lake where a large crowd began gathered around him on the shore. And this is Capernaum that this is happening. Then a leader of the local synagogue whose name was Jairus arrived. Now who's Jairus? Jairus wasn't just another guy that is in the crowd, he is a religious leader, the leader of the synagogue in Capernaum. In other words, he is arguably the most respected religious leader in that community. I mean, everybody knows who he is, everybody knows his name, they know his title. And by this point, what you have to understand is that many of the religious people, especially people like Jairus were beginning to look at Jesus as a threat. So there wasn't some like positive feeling about who Jesus is that for the most part, they've got lots of questions, lots of doubts, and they're seeing what Jesus is doing as a threat, which means that this moment for Jairus to come up to Jesus and to kneel down in front of him was so scandalous for those days. So scandalous for his title and what he does to then come and kneel before Jesus. And it says that when he does, that when he gets there, that he fell at his feet.

And I find this to be fascinating because for Jairus to come and to kneel down before Jesus, he's risking everything. He's risking his title, he's risking his influence, he's risking what everybody else would think about him. And it makes you kind of wonder what would make somebody go to this extent, this kind of what could be embarrassing, this kind of ridicule that he could get from the people, the religious people around him. And I would say this, and maybe you can relate to this at some point in your life, that there are some situations that you need that becomes greater than your pride. There's some things that you face in your life, some challenges, some hurt, some pain that becomes so significant that it becomes more important than your pride. You know, I think we see in life oftentimes it's this. It's this pattern in life of how we build our life and we lean these things like our life and our expectations and what we expect and we lean them against things in our life. We lean them against, you know, money. We lean them against influence. There's all these things that in life that we ultimately end up trusting more than God and what we discover in the journey of following Jesus is that those things often begin to be torn down in our life in order to force us to begin to trust what really matters. I mean, you think about in your life there's things that you've had to deal with and navigate that your title at work couldn't fix, like your influence on social media it couldn't fix. It didn't matter how much money you have in your bank account, like it just couldn't fix.

There's some things that no matter what your personality is or how bubbly or friendly you are that it just, there's some things in your life that that just could not fix it and that's where Jarius finds himself in this moment. In verse 23 it says that he's pleading fervently with Jesus, and notice this in verse 23, he says, my little daughter is dying. Now what I want to point out in this is that when you look at Matthew, Matthew says that she's dead. When you look at Mark and John, they're talking about the fact that he is or she is dying. And I just want to point out the reality that they're not contradicting each other. It's that two of the Gospels, right, are unpacking the details of the process of what's happening and Matthew is over here compressing all of these details into one tight story. And I look at this phrase and there's another word that jumps out to me that I feel like Mark didn't have to drop it in here, but he did, and that's the word little. That Jarius says, my little daughter is dying. Such an interesting detail because this daughter is 12 years old and, you know, for me I've got two girls and 22 and 20 years old, and when I think about my relationship with them and I think about, like, and I don't know how you are with your daughters, guys, in the room, but it's like they definitely have me wrapped around their finger, right? Like there's not, there's not, it don't matter how much I want to say no, it's really difficult for me to say no. And I think about this with Jarius, and if you're a dad and you've got daughters, I want you to think about this moment, like there's nothing that I wouldn't do for my daughters to save them from the situation that Jarius is in with his daughter. There's nothing I wouldn't do if I knew that one of my daughters' life was threatened. There's nothing that I wouldn't do to try to fix that, and to think about the significance of what Jarius has to be feeling in this moment, and it says, this is what Jarius says, he's like, please come and lay your hands on her, heal her so that he can live, she can live. Verse 25, it says, Jesus went with him and all the people followed, crowding around him. I mean, can you imagine the relief that Jarius is feeling in this moment, that as she has, she's pleaded to Jesus, and Jesus agrees, and they begin to head towards Jarius' house,

like everything inside of him has to be thinking, oh, this is when it's going to happen, like Jesus is coming, and Jesus is going to heal her, and she's going to be okay, and as they begin to walk towards Jarius' house, the unimaginable happens. Jesus stops. He stops in this moment, and it was on the way to heal Jairus' daughter that Jesus gets interrupted by the woman with the issue of blood. And I think for us, just a couple side notes with this, that it can be so easy for us to miss what is between the lines here, that you've got this woman with the issue of blood that has been that way for 12 years, and then you've got this woman that is about to lose her life that is 12 years old. Isn't it interesting that within the same story, you've got one woman who's been sick for 12 years, and you've got one woman who is 12 years old? You've got one, Jairus' daughter who's, Jairus who's highly, highly respected in the community, and then you've got this woman for 12 years that has been completely unclean and dismissed from everything. I think there's something fascinating there about the 12 years versus 12 years old. I think one thing that certainly has to be a part of the process is that Jesus is trying to help the people see that he looks just at Jairus and all of his titles and responsibility and all that kind of stuff, that he looks at the woman that has been unclean

for 12 years the same way that he looks at the woman who is about to lose her life, that Jesus loves everybody, no matter whether they're well-known and they got the titles and all that kind of stuff, or whether they're the people that nobody wants to be around, that Jesus loves them all. And I can't help but to think about Jairus in this moment as he's walking with Jesus and Jesus decides to stop. I mean, he had to like have this moment where he's like, Jesus, what are you doing? Right, not today, don't stop right now while my daughter is over here dying. Like he had to be thinking like, we can come back for her later, like she's been sick for 12 years, she could wait a little bit longer, but my daughter doesn't have 12 more minutes. He had to be thinking like, we just don't have time for this. And in verse 35, we jump to that part and while he was still speaking to her, to the woman as he's healing the woman with the issue of blood, think about this, the messengers arrive from the home of Jairus, leader of the synagogue,

and they tell him that your daughter is dead. There's no use to trouble the teacher now. I mean, imagine what's going through his mind at this moment. Imagine just the thought of Jesus, like if you only wouldn't have stopped, if you would have just kept going to be able to heal my daughter, that my daughter would still be alive and I can't help, it's an assumption, but I can't help but to think that maybe in that moment for Jairus, there was a little bit of anger towards Jesus. I wonder if in that moment, maybe there was some guilt that Jairus started to experience in his own life because here's his daughter and he wants to do everything he can for his daughter to be saved, and now she's not. And the guilt that's associated with that, maybe for him with his wife, maybe there's some shame that's connected to that because his job was to go get Jesus and to bring Jesus back in order to heal their daughter and it didn't happen. And maybe there was some shame that he began to experience

as it related to his wife. And I think that's where we can live sometimes in our life. We live in this place of if only. Like, if only Jesus would have, would have showed up when I needed Him to. If only Jesus would have helped me to be able to make that decision at just the right time. If only Jesus would have answered the prayer that we've been praying for. And so in verse 36, what we see here is it says that, but Jesus overheard them and said to Jairus, don't be afraid, just have faith. I find that interesting too, because Jesus doesn't apologize. He doesn't explain Himself or defend His situation in order to stop and to heal the woman along the way. He simply says to Jairus, don't be afraid, just have faith. And why does He do that? Well, I think because He's about to show Jairus why He wasn't in a hurry. Verse 37 says, then Jesus stopped the crowd and wouldn't let all the people go with Him except for Peter, James, and John. And when they came to the home of the synagogue leader, Jesus saw much commotion and weeping and wailing, which by the way, if you're not familiar with the culture of those days that they would hire professional mourners to come in and musicians in order to pray loudly, to cry loudly, to do all of this music loudly as a way to create this public expression of grief that would match whatever the loss was for the family. And so, they had already paid for these people to come in and play all this music and weep in this moment. And in verse 39, it says this, that He went inside and He asked, why all the commotion and the weeping? The child isn't dead, she's only asleep. And I don't know about you, but I think that's a pretty crazy moment because who in the world walks into somebody else's home where everyone else has accepted death and they walk in and they calmly say, hey, she's just asleep.

She ain't dead, she's just asleep. And in verse 40, it says the crowd laughed at Him, but He made them all leave and He took the girl's father and mother and His three disciples into the room where the girl was laying and holding her hand, He said to her, talithakum, which means little girl, get up. And the girl, who was 12 years old, immediately stood up and walked around. They were overwhelmed and totally amazed. You remember the question that we kind of posed in the beginning, that what if the pace of Jesus isn't a problem for us to solve? What if it's revealing something about Jesus that we desperately need to remember in our life? I mean, think about everything that we've seen over the last nine weeks, right? A leper, a centurion servant that would be healed, Jesus calming the storm, the demon-possessed man, Peter's mother-in-law, paralyzed man, and now Jairus' dead daughter. I don't know if you've noticed a pattern along the way, but here's the pattern that I recognize is that Jesus never panics. It doesn't matter what situation He's put in, doesn't matter what He's navigating, doesn't matter the significance of the moment, it doesn't matter how everybody else feels, that Jesus never panics. And here's why I think that is, because there's never been a situation where He wasn't in complete control. Think about it. The leper and the disease that He was experiencing. wasn't beyond His control, that for the servant that wasn't even nearby that was removed, that the soldier said, all you've got to do is speak and He will be healed, that even the distance wasn't beyond His authority to fix, that the chaos of the storm that these disciples were experiencing in a moment that seemed life or death to them wasn't beyond His authority, that the demon and the evil in which was inside of Him wasn't beyond His authority, that the sickness of Peter's mother-in-law, that wasn't beyond His authority, that the sin of the paralyzed man and Jesus healing him, not just of salvation and removing sin,

but also physical healing, it wasn't beyond His authority, that the woman with the issue of blood for twelve long years and all the suffering that He experienced in His life, that it wasn't beyond His authority. And now Matthew and Mark show us that even death isn't beyond His authority. See, Jesus isn't calm because He doesn't care. Jesus is calm because He's in control. See, at the beginning of the story, Jairus wanted Jesus to come and to heal his daughter, to change the situation that she was experiencing in the moment. But it was somewhere between the shore, somewhere between Him kneeling down in the moment, sometime between the interruption and the bad news that His daughter's not just sick, but now His daughter is dead, that somewhere between all of that, that Jairus received something even greater than maybe a daughter being healed. He received a deeper revelation of who Jesus is. And friend, sometimes I wonder if that is maybe the biggest thing that we lack in our relationship with God, an understanding and a deeper revelation of who Jesus is. I mean, think about it. He didn't just discover that Jesus could heal sick people. He discovers that Jesus has the authority over death itself. Maybe that's why Jesus wasn't in a huge hurry to go heal His daughter. Because sometimes Jesus wants to do something in us before He does something for us. And here's what I've learned in my own journey of following Jesus, that when I begin to focus on the situation at hand in my life, I always question His pace. I get so focused on what's happening around that I lose focus on Jesus' pace. And here's the truth that I hope you would carry away with you today. I think it's the truth that Jesus is wanting Jairus to understand in his own life, to trust His plan even when you don't understand His pace. And here's why. Because you can trust His pace when you trust His power. I don't know what your hurry-up-and-wait moment is in the season of your life. Maybe for some of you, it's a diagnosis.

Maybe for some of you, it's financial. Maybe for some of you, it's marriage or it's with relationships. Maybe it's with a child. Maybe it's a promise that hasn't come to pass yet. Friend, whatever your hurry-up-and-wait moment is in the season of your life, I want to challenge you with this. Don't judge Jesus because of His pace. Judge Him by who He's proven Himself to be. Because the same Jesus who calmly walked Walked into Jairus' darkest day and darkest moment is the same Jesus that's walking with you and me today. So don't run ahead of him. Don't walk away from him. Trust his plan. Even when you don't understand his pace. Because the one setting the pace is the one who has authority over everything. That you're afraid of today. Thank you so much for tuning in today. We hope you enjoyed it and if you did, make sure you subscribe. Also, if something spoke to you in a special way, share it with a friend because you never know how it could transform someone's life. If you're interested in checking out our service times, make sure you go to our website at transformtlh.com and we hope to see you at TC on a Sunday. Thanks so much and have a great day. Bye.