if you can come and touch her she’ll be healed.”  And He’s on the way; the crowds are pressing in and a woman ostracized—the Bible calls her condition “an issue of blood”—divorced, forsaken, having all of her money spent on every medical answer and without hope, but somehow she’s heard of Jesus, and in her heart if she can somehow push through the crowd and just touch even the hem of His garment she believes she’ll be healed.  Everything else has failed.  She’s tried everything, and no hope, and she is pushing her way through this mob. 

I heard a story of sort of a mob frenzy at one of the southern California playland areas.  Any of you’ve ever been in a mob that’s pressing and milling?  You can see how frightening this poor weak woman’s experience was as she pushes through to touch Him and she touches Him.  And Jesus in one of the accounts—little different than the Matthew account; not different but adds items—says “Who touched me?”  And these bright Disciples—the same ones that were counting pennies when He said “Where do we buy bread?”  The ones that reason among themselves to interpret the Master—now they’re going to explain to Him “Don’t embarrass us in front of this crowd.  You’re being bumped and jostled and you’re asking ‘Who touched me?’” 

Can’t you see these ‘asteroid orifices?’  I can see one of them over there saying, “He’s asking who touched Him.  We’re all being bumped around.  What, what do we say to Him now the, the, the weird one’s…I’m mean, figure, what’s the matter with Him?  We’re walking along, they’re knocking us down, pushing us, bumping us, and He says ‘Who touched me?’  Now we’re supposed to go figure out who touched him?  You handle this one, Peter.” 

“Oh, but Sir, we’re being jostled by everybody.”  I know what Jesus wanted to say.  If we weren’t on television I would tell you what

            He wanted to say, but He calmly said, “No.”  The word is dunamis from which we get ‘dynamite.’  “I felt dunamis.”  ‘Virtue’ is King James.  What a weakened-down version.  “I felt dunamis,” translated ‘power’ most rightly, “flow out of me.  Somebody touched me with the touch of faith that pulled from me dynamite.”  Then He found the woman.  He saw her and he said to her “Daughter”—and the King James again mistranslates, says “be of good comfort.”  Same word, imperative form.  Not ‘comfort,’ not ‘cheer,’ the word means ‘courage’—‘courage,’ and in the imperative form.  To the man sick of palsy: “Be of good courage; thy sins are forgiven thee.”  To the woman, hopeless with this one last reach of Faith—she believed and acted on her belief and went away having touched Him and He says: “Be of good courage; thy faith has made thee whole.”  Same word crops up and it’s always in the imperative mood, always.  The tense of the verb: command, imperative.

Matthew 14.  He sent his Disciples; said get in the boat and go before me across the—Am I borin’ you?  I gotta set the stage for the message to you, and this occurs in these several times in the New Testament.  He tells His Disciples to get in a boat and go across the sea.  They’re acting directly on the Lord’s command, totally in His will.  They didn’t say, “No we won’t go.”  They weren’t in disobedience.  They were doing exactly what the Lord told them to do.  Get in the boat, go over the sea, and a storm hit. 

           Lake Almanor reminds me of the Sea of Galilee.  I’ve seen the same thing happen.  In minutes the calm sea can be turned into a disaster-threatening storm.  And the storm hit in the night.  I tried to paint that picture.  We kept it downstairs in the Meditation Room.  It’s now in the Smoking Room next door to it.  You can look at it again today—it is in the Smoking Room, right?  You can look at it again