You say well goodness me! It was a sin to give birth. It was a sin to give birth, yeah. In Leviticus 12:6-7 it says something like this. I'm paraphrasing, something like this. It says after a woman gives birth she has to bring a sin offering to atone for her loss of blood, yeah. Because why? Because to give birth the way we give birth was a result of sin. Did God intend for you to have hard labour in birth? No. No, He didn't intend for that. So it was a result of sin. It made you unclean. It was a sin to touch someone who was on their monthly period, so if you just bumped into someone who was on their monthly period it made you tamei as well, because tamei was very contagious. So if she has dandruff, if I just touch her, now I am unclean and I have to go offer sacrifices to make myself clean again. If someone's on their monthly period and I touch them I actually become unclean. Like what did you do, wear a sign? [Laughter] What would you do?
Like it was a sin to touch furniture that a woman who had had a period in the last three days had sat on. [Laughter] Yeah, like it was a sin to touch furniture where a married couple had been intimate in the last three days. Like what did you do, put a sign up? [Laughter] I was teaching this once at a pastor's home and he made everybody get off the couch. [Laughter] He was like 76! [Laughter] I was like good for you! [Laughter] Yeah, you're 76 and you're still having sofa sex, that is so great! [Laughter] It's just fantastic isn't it? So everything made you tamei, like all these things made you tamei and tamei was so contagious. You could catch it at any moment. Now understanding that about this culture, you have a lady who's had an issue of bleeding for 12 years. What does that make her? Tamei, so she's elbowing her way through the crowd. What's happening to every person she's touching? They're becoming unclean. Now I want you to understand the emotional ramifications of having an issue of bleeding for 12 years in that culture.
Once people found out she would be declared tamei and would not have been allowed to be purposely touched in 12 years, so for 12 years when she walked into a room people would have put their hands behind their back and walked away. Can you imagine the emotional rejection? Most rabbis would have given her husband a certificate of divorce, a right to divorce her simply because he could not touch her without becoming unclean himself. Therefore he had a right to leave, so likely in 12 years she would have been divorced. She would have been not purposely touched in 12 years. Can you imagine the emotional pain she would have been dealing with? The rejection. She elbows her way through the crowd to a man named Jesus who is on His way where? [Jairus' daughter.] So she's going to disturb Him and she reaches up and it says she grabs the hem of His garment.
So if He's the messiah what is found in His tassels? Healing, so why would she grab them? This was a culture of people who memorised everything about messiah. She knew if this is the One He's going to have healing in His tassels, and if I can just get a hold to them I'll be healed. It was a faith move. It was publically saying this is the One, so she reaches up and she grabs the tassels and Jesus breaks form doesn't He? Like when Jesus healed people what did He normally say? Shh-shh-shh-shh, don't tell anybody. Like that was His whole marketing strategy: tell people not to say anything and He knew they would. [Laughter] [Reverse psychology.] Same thing, same thing today. But here He breaks form doesn't He? What does He do? He's like WHO TOUCHED ME? WHO TOUCHED ME? POWER HAS LEFT FROM ME - which totally breaks form doesn't it?