The scene at Jairus’ home could best be described as bedlam. Matthew 9:23 tells us that a large crowd of
people had gathered—professional mourners and musicians who were called on to
mourn for the dead. In fact, if one goes
over to the Middle East, you can still see this kind of funeral today. Now, as Christ arrived on the scene to
perform this miracle, He made an announcement.
In Matthew 9:24, He told them to leave because the girl wasn’t dead but
rather she was sleeping.
There are a few observations I’d like for us to make here. First of all, notice that when Christ spoke,
He spoke with authority. He didn’t ask
them to leave, he ordered them to leave.
When Christ speaks, He always speaks with authority since, not only is
He the Son of God, He is God in human flesh.
Now, we don’t hear Christ’s voice audibly, we do hear the voice of
Christ in with written word of God. As
Martin Luther said “Let the man who would hear God speak read holy scripture”. Secondly, Christ isn’t speaking literally as
if the child was just deep into a REM cycle, having a good dream, and didn’t
want to wake up. He was using a common
euphemism where death was referred to as sleep.
Also, He likely meant that her death wasn’t a permanent condition. She hadn’t died so as to remain dead. Rather, she had died and now Christ, who is
the Life, was there to raise her back to life.
One final consideration as we come to this awesome miracle in verse 25—I
can’t speak for everyone out there who read this blog, but for myself, until I
started studying this passage, I don’t think I realized how spectacular an
occurrence this was. Really, the gospels
only record three times where Christ raised someone from the dead—the widow’s
son at Nain (Luke 7:11-17), the raising of Lazarus (John 11:1-46—which was the
miracle that made the Pharisees say “Ok, we’ve had about enough of this”), and
this child being raised from the dead.
In other words, resurrection was rare.
When people died, they stayed dead and nothing could be done to change
that. So, when this happened, it was a
totally unexpected, startling event.
Even for someone reading only this gospel for the first time, this is
completely unusual.
The crowd’s response is not altogether unexpected—the verse tells us
they laughed. Now, because the verb
“laughed” is in the imperfect tense, we shouldn’t understand that they just had
a good chuckle over Jesus’ statement.
“Oh, this guy can’t tell the difference between a dead person and
someone who is asleep. What a
hoot!” This was a mocking that went on
and on, just like any crowd of people is likely to do. You can almost hear a sing-song kind of
“nanny, nanny, boo, boo” start up by the crowd—“She’s not dead, she’s
sleeping. She’s not dead, she’s
sleeping. Bwahahahahahah”. They mocked the idea that Christ could save
this girl. They didn’t just doubt Him,
they made fun of Him. Therefore, He
commanded them to leave, and then went in to see the child.
As Christ went in to where the girl was laying, he took her hand in His
and she came back to life. The other
gospel writers provide more detail (i.e. only James, John, Peter, and the
girl’s parents were permitted to come with Him, He spoke to her in Aramaic) but
the important point remains the same.
This little girl who I’m sure meant the world to her parents had
died. Now, because of the compassion of
our Savior, she was restored to life. As
miraculous as this was, though, an even greater miracle can occur today. Someone who rejected God and the gospel can
place their faith in Christ and repent of their sins and God will save them—He
will resurrect them from being spiritually dead and bound for eternal torment
in hell to being spiritually alive and bound for eternity in heaven. Praise God that He is still in the business
of raising the dead.
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