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Mark | 1:1-11 | 1:12-34 | 1:35-45 | 2:1-20  | 2:21-3:12 | 3:13-35 | 4:1-20 | 4:21-41 | 5:1-20 | 5:21-43 | 6:1-13 | 6:14-29 | 6:45-56 | 7-12| 13-16 |

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Mark 5:21-43 Bible Study Guide and Questions – Jesus Raises a Girl to Life and Heals a Woman

Outline

I. Jairus’ request (21-24)
II. A desperate woman is healed (25-34)
III. Jesus’ raised the girl back to life (35-43)

I. Jairus’ request (21-24)

Discussion Questions

• Where was Jesus crossing over from? What had happened on the other side?
• What was a synagogue?
• What was Jairus’ request? What did this show about him?
• How did Jesus respond to his request?

Verse by Verse Commentary

1. As soon as Jesus came back across the Sea of Galilee from his brief trip to cast out the demons from the man in the region of the Garasenes, he was swamped by crowds of people again. He stayed by the seashore teaching them.

2. Jairus asks Jesus for help –

Mark 5:22-23 – Then came one of the rulers of the synagogue, Jairus by name, and seeing him, he fell at his feet and implored him earnestly, saying, “My little daughter is at the point of death. Come and lay your hands on her, so that she may be made well and live.”

Jairus came to Jesus to ask for healing for his daughter. When he arrived, he got straight to the point. He boldly walked right up to Jesus and asked for help. He did it with humility, falling down at Jesus’ feet. There were no demands, only the earnest request of a concerned father. He also had complete faith in Jesus. Jairus believed that if Jesus laid hands on her, she would be made well. It was likely this faith that prompted Jesus to go with him to heal the girl.

Jairus gives us a good model about how to make requests of God in our prayers.

Application –

A. Boldness – We should be bold. The Bible says that if we ask, we shall receive. Do not be afraid to make big requests of God or even to ask for divine healing or miracles. There is no point in hinting or beating around the bush when God knows your heart anyway.

Hebrews 4:16 – Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.

“Ask great things of God. Attempt great things for God.” – William Carey

B. Humility – While we should be bold, this doesn’t mean that we should be impertinent or demanding. It is not our place to demand that God answer our prayers. He is on the throne over the universe and not us. Part of humility is recognizing who we are and who He is. It is understanding that it is God’s grace and favor to us that motivates Him to help us, not our inherent right or something that we deserve.

C. Politeness – Part of humility is remembering that we are coming before the God of heaven and earth. That motivates us to politely beseech His favor rather than tell Him what He should or should not do. Jairus was an important person in that society, but he didn’t come to Jesus as a peer.

D. This passage is a good reminder to evaluate your prayer lives. Are you satisfied with the amount of time you spend in prayer each day? Do you regularly pray for others? Do you have requests which you persistently bring up to the Lord, or do you “pray once and then forget?” What are some specific things you could do in the coming year to improve your prayer life? Here are some ideas.

• Prayer notebook
• Setting a goal to fast 2-3 times this year.
• Finding a prayer partner to pray with either in person or by phone.
• Resolving to pray together daily with a spouse.

3. Jesus went with Him – Once again, we see Jesus’ compassion. He seems to be always ready to inconvenience Himself and set aside what He is doing to help people in need.

Reflect – Are you equally ready to inconvenience yourselves to help others when they request it of you?

II. A desperate woman is healed (25-34)

Discussion Questions

• What can we learn about this woman from this passage?
• How must she have felt suffering through this illness for 12 years?
• Why could the physicians not help her?
• Should she have kept seeing them? Did this demonstrate a lack of faith?
• What kinds of doubts or feelings toward God may have arisen in those 12 years?
• Why did God put her through this trial? Since we can’t know why, what might she have learned during these 12 years?
• Why did Jesus ask who touched Him? Did He not know the answer?
• What was the result of His question? For the woman? For the crowd? For the disciples?
• How did Jesus respond to the lady? What can we learn about His character from this?
• How might Jairus have felt while all of this was going on?

Cross-References

John 5:1-17 – A man who couldn’t walk for 38 years was healed.

Luke 8:43 – And there was a woman who had had a discharge of blood for twelve years, and though she had spent all her living on physicians, she could not be healed by anyone.

Faith and healing:

Acts 3:16 – And his name—by faith in his name—has made this man strong whom you see and know, and the faith that is through Jesus has given the man this perfect health in the presence of you all.

Matthew 15:28, 9:28-29 – Jesus healed two people who expressed faith in Him.

James 5:14-15 – Is anyone among you sick? Let him call for the elders of the church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer of faith will save the one who is sick, and the Lord will raise him up. And if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven.

Verse by Verse Commentary

1. The woman had this problem for 12 years – Have any of you been sick for 12 years? How about one year?

The worst pain in my life was when I had appendicitis. The pain lasted about two days before I had the surgery. It is hard for me to imagine what it must have been like for this lady to have this problem for 12 years. Not only would the hemorrhoids have been quite painful, but they would have also been very inconvenient and kept her from living a normal life.

This woman had tried everything. She was in a desperate situation, hopeless to solve this problem or find anyone who could. That is the bad news. But the good news is that God is in the business of helping hopeless and desperate people. That is exactly what He does when He saves sinners like you and me.

Reflect – What is a trial you have experienced for a long time? How has God shown Himself to be faithful in the midst of that trial?

2. The lady had tried to get help from many physicians -There is nothing the matter with seeing doctors to get help. Some cultish groups forbid seeing doctors, but we don’t see such commands anywhere in the Bible. Jesus Himself told the man with leprosy to go and report his healing to the priest. Also, God often uses people to help other people.

It was not wrong for her to see physicians, and it is still not wrong for us today. However, we must always remember to ultimately depend on God and not on people. We don’t know from the context what the lady’s attitude was like during these twelve years or whether she was depending on God or not. She very well could have prayed for healing during that time, but God had His timing.

3. Why did God wait twelve years to heal her? –

We do not know the answer to this question. But we know that there are countless people who are in pain and face health issues today who have the same question. While we don’t know for sure why God waited, we can see some benefits.

• Firstly, it taught the lady without a shadow of a doubt that God alone could heal her and people could not.
• It led the lady first to hopelessness and then to Christ. Sometimes, God may allow us to go through these trials to increase our dependency on Him and remind us to be humble.
• It provided an opportunity for Christ to do a miracle, which in turn glorified God and encouraged more people to believe in Him.
• During those twelve years, the lady learned many lessons about God and His character and also had her faith and patience tested. We must always remember that God cares more about our character than our comfort.

God’s timing is not ours. He often asks us to wait. That is because the process is important, not just the final destination.

Psalms 27:14 – Wait for the LORD; be strong, and let your heart take courage; wait for the LORD!

Psalms 37:7 – Be still before the LORD and wait patiently for him; fret not yourself over the one who prospers in his way, over the man who carries out evil devices!

While God will heal all the pain and sicknesses of His people, that healing may not come until eternity on the new earth (Revelation 21:4).

4. The woman had exhausted every avenue and hope – In her despair, she heard of Jesus and knew that He had healed many people. She believed that He could heal her, and therefore, she left her house and found Jesus in the crowd. She had such a high opinion of Jesus’ power that she believed she only needed to touch His garment for healing.

Reflect – Would this guarantee healing? What should she have done?

The woman seems to have lacked the boldness and straightforwardness of Jairus. She hoped to obtain this healing in secret, perhaps out of fear that Jesus would turn down her request. This does not seem like the right approach. An honest request would have been better. It is also possible that she was embarrassed about the nature of her ailment.

Being bloodied in that way meant that she was virtually constantly in a state of being ritually unclean for over a decade.

5. Jesus did not condemn her – Jesus did not say, “Why did you ask me? Because you were afraid to ask, you will not be healed. Leave now.”

It feels as though the lady was taking advantage of Jesus a little bit by not asking Him first. But Jesus did not condemn her. He knew full well she was approaching and touched His clothes. Yet He still consciously decided to heal her. This is an important reminder of Jesus’ compassion and grace, which He always showed to other people.

Application – Jesus often allowed Himself to be taken advantage of. He helped many people who didn’t deserve it. In today’s age, people are overly concerned with their own “rights” and go to great lengths to protect these “rights.” We should take a page from Jesus’ playbook and be more concerned with people than our rights.

6. Jesus then asked, “Who touched my garment?” – He knew the answer. This is another case where asking was not for His own benefit but for the listener. In a similar case, God asked Cain where his brother was (Genesis 4:9) and Adam and Eve if they had eaten the fruit (Genesis 3:11). In both cases, He gave them a chance to confess.

If Jesus didn’t say anything, the woman would have gone away without ever talking to Him. I believe she would have regretted this for the rest of her life. She would likely have felt some shame and guilt at the way she received her healing and blamed herself for not either asking or thanking Jesus. Jesus, therefore, kindly gave her an opportunity to come clean and take the weight off of her conscience. To her credit, the woman admitted it. Her fear and trembling show us that she felt a bit guilty at the way this went down.

7. Jesus recognized the lady’s faith – She did have a lot of faith, and this is why Jesus was willing to heal her. He then pronounced a blessing to her, “Go and peace and be healed.” Those words would have been like balm to her soul. Not only was she physically healed, but Jesus didn’t hold her rudeness against her. Instead, He forgave her and sent her away in peace. God is merciful.

Normally, by touching someone, she would have transferred her uncleanness to that person. But instead of being made unclean by her, Jesus made her clean! He makes a similar trade when He takes our dirty sins and gives us His righteousness.

III. Jesus’ raised the girl back to life (35-43)

Discussion Questions

• How might Jairus and the people around have reacted to Jesus’ statement in verse 36?
• Why did Jesus only allow those three disciples to go with him into the house?
• What did Jesus mean in verse 39 that the child was merely asleep? Had they wrongly concluded she was dead?
• How did Jesus respond to their derision? How should we respond when people laugh at us?
• How long did Jesus’ miracle take?
• How did the people react?
• Why did Jesus tell them not to spread this news?

Cross-References

1 Thessalonians 4:13-14 – But we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about those who are asleep, that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope. For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep.

Luke 1:37 – For nothing will be impossible with God.

Hebrews 11:1 – Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.

Luke 17:5 – The apostles said to the Lord, “Increase our faith!”

On Persecution

John 15:18 – If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you.

1 Peter 3:17 – For it is better to suffer for doing good, if that should be God’s will, than for doing evil.

Hebrews 12:3 Consider him who endured from sinners such hostility against himself, so that you may not grow weary or fainthearted.

Luke 6:22 – Blessed are you when people hate you and when they exclude you and revile you and spurn your name as evil, on account of the Son of Man!

Verse by Verse Commentary

1. During this encounter with the woman, Jairus must have been very nervous about the delay – Inside, he was likely pleading for Jesus to hurry up! Then the news came that confirmed his worst fears. He was too late! His daughter had already passed. At that moment, many questions could have sprung up in his mind. Why? Why did he wait so long to ask Jesus for help? Why did Jesus not run when He heard the news? Why did his little one have to die? Many of us may have asked “why?” before.

Jairus was able to get answers for his “why,” but we may never know the answers to our “why” questions this side of heaven. The things we face in life are sometimes like a puzzle piece. By itself, it doesn’t show us a lot. Only after the whole puzzle is put together does each piece make full sense and take on a larger meaning. God sees the whole puzzle, but short of heaven, we do not.

Reflect – Will you be willing to trust in God during that most difficult moment? If your child, parent, or spouse dies, will you grow bitter against the Lord or trust in His plan for you? Make up your mind now to continue to have faith in God and His loving and merciful character no matter what happens.

2. Jesus simply Jairus to believe –

Mark 5:36 – Do not fear, only believe.

That was an easy thing to ask but a hard thing to do. His daughter had already died. What and how was he supposed to believe? This is what faith is, believing what is not yet seen.

Hebrews 11:1 – Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.

God also asks us to believe when it is not always easy.

3. The scene at the house was one of great grief –

Mark 5:38 – They came to the house of the ruler of the synagogue, and Jesus saw a commotion, people weeping and wailing loudly.

The child had passed seemingly far before her time was due. Jesus told them that she was merely asleep. The word “sleep” was often used by Jesus to denote a death that was not permanent. In her case, death was temporary since Jesus planned to restore her life again.

4. The people there did not believe – Though they laughed at Him, Jesus did not pick up His stuff and leave. He didn’t grow angry or argue with them. He blocked out their ridicule and continued on doing what He knew He should do.

Reflect – What do you do when people laugh at you? Do you change your actions and try to blend in? Do you take it personally? Do you throw insults back at them? What should we do?

5. Jesus then raised her up again – His command could not be ignored, even by a lifeless body. His authority extends to life and death. The girl immediately got up, and the people were shocked. Their laughs were instantly gone, silenced by Jesus. The same will be true of people who laugh at God or His people. It might not happen right away, but one day, all laughs and scorn will be silenced.

Application – What is a difficult situation you are facing in your life? How can you have faith in God in the middle of that situation?

6. Jesus told them not to spread the news of her resurrection –

Mark 5:43 – And he strictly charged them that no one should know this, and told them to give her something to eat.

This was not the only time Jesus gave such a command. One reason for it was likely that He didn’t want too many crowds around, which would prevent Him from fulfilling His preaching ministry. While Jesus was willing to heal people who asked for it, the thrust of His ministry was preaching about the coming kingdom of God.