Luke 8:43 Commentary - Dr Peter Masters

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Luke 8:43

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This woman had lived for twelve long years with an issue of blood, a terrible haemorrhage. She had spent all her living upon physicians, but was no better through any of their remedies. She was in a very sorry state. She was not only very sick and had been that way for years – exhausted, tired, with a very poor quality of life, much pain, no doubt – but she had been excluded from society, because sadly that was the way of things in those days. She could not go to the temple to worship. She could not worship in her local synagogue. She could not meet with certain kinds of people, and it is probable that she had previously been quite well to do. Putting the three Gospel accounts together, the language suggests she had spent a good fortune on physicians in her day. But she was a hopeless case. In Mark's Gospel we read ominously that she had suffered many things of the physicians. This is the beginning of an account which is designed to help us, because just as she found faith in Christ to heal her physically, so we must find faith in Christ to heal us spiritually. There was always a lesson in everything which Christ did: every direct statement, every parable, every healing; his was a teaching ministry throughout. He was the Lord Jesus Christ; he was the Saviour of the world. Certainly the Lord Jesus Christ would scarcely have been able to help himself in performing these mighty miracles, these great things, so overflowing was he with compassion and with concern; he was almost bound to do things. But nevertheless there is always a lesson in every single event, and here is an example of one who was afflicted, and whose healing has a lesson for us in a spiritual way. We see the character of Christ, we see the nature of disease and disorder, not only physical disease and disorder, but spiritual disease and disorder mirrored here in the plight of this poor woman. She had been twelve years in this condition, and the Gospel of Mark tells us that she was steadily growing worse. She was reaching the very end now, as she would not be able to remain on her feet for much longer – she was so weak – and it was at this stage that she came to the Lord Jesus Christ, in absolute complete trust that he could help her. If only she could just get near her and touch him. It is inconceivable that this woman would for 12 years have done nothing about her disease. Obviously she is a woman of substance, and during all that time she is spending out on the doctors. There was another alternative for this woman and she took it. She set about trying to get this condition cured, trying to see what she could do about it and she went to doctor after doctor and she tried all the remedies of those days. Actually those remedies were pretty awful. If you had a severe enough haemorrhage, the chances are that they would bleed you even more, which would only seem to be making matters worse, but that's what they did.

Application

Here we are viewed from the viewpoint of the Bible: we all are equally suffering from a disease, an illness of the soul, an illness of our inner being. From the moment we are born, life is running out. And as we grow up, we get into womanhood, manhood, life and youth and energy are already running down. Wouldn't you think that we would have some concern about the meaning and the purpose of life? What are my years being lived for? Soon I shall be that much older, that much weaker, that much more tired, that much nearer the end of my journey. What's it all about? Life is, whatever we may like to think, a decline to the end of the journey. Wouldn't you think we would be concerned to make some inquiry, to have some philosophy, to have some explanation? It is certainly inconceivable that this poor woman would have done absolutely nothing about her condition, and that is certainly true of many of us. It may be that amidst all things you think about, all the ideas and possibilities that pour through your mind, the one thing that is never processed by you, never thought about, is life itself. What is it for> What is going to become of you as you grow old. Perhaps for some that is the last thing that ever occurs to them.

Here we are with our spiritual malaise – the void within us, our lack of meaning, the aching conscience which we all suffer from, an emptiness within. What do we do? When we try to get help, to pick ourselves up, to have some satisfaction, what do we do? The recipes of the world are like the prescriptions of those doctors of long ago. All it seems to prescribe are things which actually make our condition worse. The prescriptions of this world for the needs of the soul are easily summed up. What you need, says the world, is one or other of these things. You need to fill your life with material things. If you do that, it will satisfy you at a number of levels. To possess things, to be able to look at them and gloat over them and use them and play with them: that's tremendous. But they will give you all sorts of other areas of satisfaction. You can enjoy gloating over other people who haven't got the same things that you have got. If other people do have more or less the same things, then you just pay a little bit more and you get something that's rather different or rather exclusive that you can show off. Then again, even before you get them, you can enjoy dreaming about them. You can work for them; you can aim at them. You can get all the catalogues out, and work out just what you are going to have. This is how you're going to fill the aching void. This is how you're going to give meaning and purpose to your life.

Of course, there are great problems with this. Although we may start off thinking that this is a tremendous remedy for the need of my life, we don't stop to reflect, ‘Surely life is worth more than things, possessions and so on.’ But after a while, as you go a little further down life, you find it's phony, because this remedy is like a bad drug. You just need more and more of it; the more you go down life's pathway, the more you need. These things don't lift you up after a while. They grow stale on you. You don't enjoy dreaming about them so much and gloating over them. You've got to have more things and bigger things to keep the effect going and to fill your life. Finally, the side effect of the drug comes in: all the heartache of getting these things, the rat race, the money you've got to earn, the way you've got to push yourself to keep up with your cravings. After all, the drug isn't just a bottle in a cupboard; it’s your house around you and your car and all the things that are getting bigger and bigger all the time. It's a crazy remedy. Is that really the measure of life? Is that what we have been created for? To just hook ourselves onto things and to be slaves of the things that we can make, driven by them, owned by them?

There are other remedies too. If it isn't material things, you are told you can have all kinds of sensual pleasures, comedy, entertainment, recreations. Now, of course, we don't want to condemn pleasure or to suggest that there is not a vast array of perfectly wholesome and rewarding pursuits. Everyone has got to eat, but if someone were to tell you that the way to be happy was just to stuff yourself, and to do nothing but eat, and the way to deepen in character, to grow in understanding, was just to keep pouring in quantities of food into your mouth, you would say that is nonsense. It's exactly the same with leisure. We are not condemning any of these things, but if you make them into a remedy for the hunger of your soul you will only get worse.

For some people it's not so much pleasure or possessions, but it is the remedy of ego and ambition. Someone gets his satisfaction out of outscoring other people, getting to a higher job, a higher place, becoming more powerful, being admired, being famous. After a while, he can't necessarily keep it up. All these things are not remedies; they are totally irrelevant to the needs of the soul.

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Luke 8:43 Commentary and Bible Study